Who Owns Jerusalem?

A Biblical Perspective

Jerusalem is in the news these days way out proportion to the
size or economic significance of this relatively small city in
the hills of the tiny nation of Israel. King David originally
captured the small village from the Jebusites, a Canaanite tribe
descended from Noah's son Ham. But, ever since David's day the
"city of peace" has known turmoil, war, and bloodshed
much of the time. Although Jews are now celebrating "Jerusalem
3000," in honor of David, David's progenitor Abraham came
to Jerusalem 1000 years earlier. Abraham found a gentile ruler
there who was both king and priest of El Elyon---"God
Most High." Melchizedek---whose name means "king of
righteousness"---was such an important figure that Abraham
offered him tithes and considered him to be the superior, (Hebrews
7). Jewish legend even says that Adam was created in Jerusalem
and some rabbis say the foundation stone of the Jewish Temples
is the foundation upon which creation began. Evidently Jerusalem
was a city chosen by God from the very beginning of time.

Most writers of our time will acknowledge that Jerusalem's
prominence in the news has something to do with God, or
at least the city is famous because of its association with the
world's three monotheistic religions who trace their roots to
Abraham---Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In her outstanding book Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths,
(Alfred Knopf, New York, 1996) Karen Armstrong does not reveal
to us the identity of the one true God, but she does relate eloquently,
and with an even hand, the history and significance of Jerusalem
for Christians, Moslems and Jews.

A hundred years ago there were no great world powers in the
region. Oil had not been discovered in Arabia and Iran. Jerusalem
was a small slumbering insignificant town and the land was considered
practically worthless. Swiftly in the last half of our century
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and the Emirates sprang into
existence out of nowhere. Now the region is heavily populated
and everyone is intent on a search for his or her ancient roots.
An article in The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1996
analyzes this amazing development:

Pray for the peace
of Jerusalem! May they prosper who love you!

Time Sharing In Mideast Politics, Controlling the
Past. Is a Key to the Present

Clash Over Tunnel Illustrates Volatility. of Intertwining
The Daily, and the Divine

Ancient Stories Are Rewritten

By Amy Dockser Marcus
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

JERUSALEM - For years, the main battle in the Middle East has,
been over land. Now it is over the past. Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu often cites Abraham's biblical connection to
Hebron as one reason his government has determined to maintain
a Jewish presence in the predominantly Muslim West Bank city.
In response, the Palestinian Authority has begun promoting the
notion that the Palestinians are the modern-day successorsto the Canaanites, who lived there, long before Abraham ever
showed up.

"This is no longer just a political dispute over who controls
cities like Hebron or Jerusalem," says Marwan Abu-Khalaf,
director of the Institute of Islamic Archaeology in Jerusalem.
"Both the Israelis and Palestinians are determined to prove
that their ancestors lived here first."

Whether it is Americans converging on Plymouth Rock or the
British celebrating at the ruins of Stonehenge, the idea of connecting
modern population to the symbols of the past is a common impulse.
But in the Middle East, few of the region's modern states have
existed much more than 70 years and most are the product of borders
drawn up by colonial powers. The waning of pan-Arab nationalism,
with its exclusive focus on the region's Arab past, has resulted
in today's leaders increasingly looking for inspiration and roots
in an even earlier time---to the ancient empires and peoples described
in the Bible.

Volatile Mix

The frequent intertwining of the daily and. the divine is proving
a volatile mix especially in a region with so many political conflicts.

Last week's gun battles between Israelis and Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip that left more than 70 people dead
reflect broad Palestinian frustration with stalled peace talks
and the new Israeli government's hard-line policies. But the riots
were touched off by an Israeli decision to open a new gate to
a biblical underground tunnel that runs close to the Temple Mount
area, a site considered holy to both Jews and Muslims.

Mr. Netanyahu said the tunnel offers contact with the rock
of Jewish existence 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. But Mr. Arafat
said the move was part of a broader Israeli effort to "Judaize
Jerusalem" at the expense of Muslim religious claims in the
city.

Yesterday President Clinton announced he would hold a summit
in Washington early this week between Israeli and Palestinian
leaders. King Hussein of Jordan has agreed to attend Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak has been invited.

"Historical-Period Costume"

The phenomenon isn't confined to Israelis and Palestinians
alone. All across the region, says U.S. archaeological historian
Neil Asher Silberman we are seeing People acting out modern political
agendas decked out in historical period costume.

Take Syria's President Hafez Assad. He likes to seat foreign
visitors in front of an ancient mosaic he had restored and installed
in a reception room in his palace. The archaeological find portrays
the 1187 battle when Salah al Din---who once ruled from his Imperial
seat in ancient Syria---defeated the Christian armies of the Crusaders,
forcing their retreat from the Holy Land. In speeches, Mr. Assad
frequently cites the example of Salah al Din as support for the
hard-line approach he has taken in his dealings with the Israelis,
who he views as latter-day Crusaders.

At the height of his recent military confrontation with the
U.S, over the Iraqi army's push into the northern Kurdish enclave,
Saddam Hussein made sure his top brass showed up at this month's
Babylon Festival. The annual celebration is part of the Iraqi
leader's effort to portray himself as the modern-day successor
of King Nebuchadnezzar whose biblical empire stretched from Kuwait
to Israel. Saddam Hussein has used bricks stamped with his name
and the seal of Iraq in the restoration of Nebuchadnezzar's ancient
palace in Babylon, 60 miles south or Baghdad. He cited the claim
that Nebuchadnezzar's father was an ancient tribal leader in what
is now Kuwait as further justification for Iraq's 1991 invasion
of that country.

"It's not that the Middle East's leaders are suddenly
big believers in the Bible or avid readers of history books,"
says Efraim Karsh, a professor at King's College at the University
of London and author of a political biography of Saddam Hussein.
"The obsession with the past is geared toward reinforcing
the modern foundations of power."

That is why it is no surprise that one of the first acts the
Palestinian Authority took after setting up its self-ruling government
in Jericho was the launching of an archaeological dig at the nearby
Hisham's Palace, the ruins of a winter residence built in the
eighth century for a caliph of the Omayyad Dynasty. The authority
also began pushing for the return of archaeological artifacts
found in the West Bank during the Israeli military occupation,
including the 2000 year old Dead Sea scrolls. The issue is so
sensitive that Israel and the authority decided to leave it for
later negotiations, along with other volatile disputes such as
the future of Jerusalem, and fate of Jewish settlements.

But archaeologists and biblical scholars say they are often
amazed at the historical liberties taken by political leaders,
who, disregard or sometimes rewrite ancient stories to suit current
needs. In August, the Palestinian Authority held a ceremony in
the ancient amphitheater of Sabatsia, a village near the West
Bank city of Nablus. Young people recreated the pagan legend of
Ba'al, the Canaanite god, as a narrator read aloud an ancient
text designed to resonate with the modern political troubles of
its audience: warnings about the Hebrew tribes led by Joshua that
were then starting to conquer Canaan.

The ceremony itself had some scholarly holes, from the fact
that Sabatsia was never a Canaanite city to the T-shirts worn
by the ceremony participants that were decorated with a Philistine,
rather than Canaanite, motif. But Mr. Abu Khalaf of the Islamic
archaeology institute says those, insisting on rigorous academic
standards are missing the point. Though scholars say it isn't
likely that the Canaanites originated in Arabia, he argues that
life in traditional Palestinian, villages today isn't much different
than it was when the Canaanites lived here. It also doesn't bother
him when Palestinians call Jesus Christ the first Palestinian.
Jesus lived in Bethlehem, Mr. Abu Khalaf says, and Bethlehem's
current inhabitants are Palestinians.

"This is about nation-building," he adds. "This
is a way for us to say that, contrary to what the Israelis are
trying to portray we were here too, we have a history here, all
this is part of Palestinian culture.

Israeli efforts to make the Bible part of the political tug-of-war
here are also on shaky historical ground. Israel Finkelstein,
a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, says there
are virtually no archaeological clues as to any of Hebron's former
inhabitants, let alone proof of Abraham's presence there outside
of the biblical tale.

Bible scholar Jacob Milgrom argues that Israeli groups that
make political claims to the West Bank based on the contention
that it was once part of the biblical land of Israel should think
again. The Old Testament describes three different sets of boundaries
for the land of Israel the book of Prophets three more, and rabbinic
authorities a seventh, he says. "The borders were always
changing according to the particular historical circumstances,"
says Mr. Milgrom, a professor emeritus of biblical studies at
the University of California in Berkeley.

The Jerusalem water tunnel provides an illustration of the
dangers inherent in the current trend. Israeli novelist Meir Shalev
says the religious claims about the tunnel, already exaggerated,
could spin even further out of control. "I wouldn't be surprised
if next we hear that Bathsheba used water from the tunnel to wash
before King David or that Mohammed's horse drank water from that
tunnel," he says. Mr. Shalev's novel inspired by the biblical
story of Esau, the brother who gave away his birthright to his
twin brother Jacob for some pottage, was a bestseller in Israel.

By trying to attach biblical significance to even the smallest
archaeological find, an international political crisis is unfolding
over what Mr. Shalev calls "an interesting hydrological project
from the Second Temple period, the ancient equivalent of a municipal
water tunnel."

Men Search for their Roots in History, but What is Truth?

The Wall Street Journal article seems to describe a situation
where no one really cares who the real owner of Jerusalem might
be, just as no one in our society is much interested in learning
absolute and ultimate Truth. Indeed, modern man denies that there
is any such thing as absolute truth.

In spite of the turmoil among world religions, political powers
and ethnic group the real owner of the city---for whom it is indeed
a special place, stands aloof for the moment unmoved by the machinations
of men. Yahweh, the God of Israel promises, however, to step back
into the picture, himself, personally.

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's
sake I will not rest, until her vindication goes forth as brightness,
and her salvation as a burning torch. The nations shall see your
vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called
by a new name which the mouth of the LORD will give. You shall
be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem
in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall
be called My delight is in her, and your land Married; for the
LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as
a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you, and
as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God
rejoice over you. Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen;
all the day and all the night they shall never be silent.

You who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest, and give
him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise
in the earth. The LORD has sworn by his right hand and by his
mighty arm: "I will not again give your grain to be food
for your enemies, and foreigners shall not drink your wine for
which you have labored; but those who garner it shall eat it
and praise the LORD, and those who gather it shall drink it in
the courts of my sanctuary." Go through, go through the
gates, prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the
highway, clear it of stones, lift up an ensign over the peoples.
Behold, the LORD has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say
to the daughter of Zion, "Behold, your salvation comes;
behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him."
And they shall be called The holy people, The redeemed of the
LORD; and you shall be called Sought out, a city not forsaken.
(Isaiah 62)

Jerusalem, a Crushing Weight

Quite a few Bible scholars (both Jewish and Christian) have
lately taken note of the last two chapters of the Old Testament
prophet Zechariah who wrote of God's final intervention in the
affairs of Jerusalem:

An Oracle. The word of the LORD concerning Israel: Thus says
the LORD, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth
and formed the spirit of man within him: "Lo, I am about
to make Jerusalem a cup of reeling to all the peoples round about;
it will be against Judah also in the siege against Jerusalem.
On that day I will make Jerusalema heavy stone for
all the peoples; all who lift it shall grievously hurt themselves.
And all the nations of the earth will come together against it..."

Behold, a day of the LORD is coming, when the spoil taken
from you will be divided in the midst of you. For I will gather
all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall
be taken and the houses plundered and the women ravished; half
of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall
not be cut off from the city. Then the LORD will go forth
and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of
battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives
which lies before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives
shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley;
so that one half of the Mount shall withdraw northward, and the
other half southward. And the valley of my mountains shall
be stopped up, for the valley of the mountains shall touch the
side of it; and you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake
in the days of Uzziah king of Judah.

Then the LORD your God will come, and all the holy ones
with him. On that day there shall be neither cold nor frost...And
the LORD will become king over all the earth; on that day the
LORD will be one and his name one...And this shall be the
plague with which the LORD will smite all the peoples that wage
war against Jerusalem: their flesh shall rot while they are still
on their feet, their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their
tongues shall rot in their mouths...Then every one that survives
of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go
up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and
to keep the feast of booths...And on that day there shall be
inscribed on the bells of the horses, "Holy to the LORD."
And the pots in the house of the LORD shall be as the bowls before
the altar; and every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred
to the LORD of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and
take of them and boil the flesh of the sacrifice in them..."

Christians believe that the Returning King described by Zechariah
will be Jesus Christ Himself. Devout Jews say this conqueror will
be a Son of David---but someone other than Jesus. Christians
and Jews are not always in agreement on many issues, especially
concerning the identity of the coming Messiah. However the God
of the Christian Scriptures is very clearly the God of the Tanach.
He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and King David. Yahweh
asserts claim not only to Jerusalem and the land of Israel, but
also to the entire world. Christians are aware that their Scriptures
were written by Jews and that Jesus---Yeshua---is also Jewish.

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you
shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your might."

"And when the LORD your God brings you [Israel] into
the land which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac,
and to Jacob, to give you, with great and goodly cities, which
you did not build, and houses full of all good things, which
you did not fill, and cisterns hewn out, which you did not hew,
and vineyards and olive trees, which you did not plant, and when
you eat and are full, then take heed lest you forget the LORD,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage. You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve him,
and swear by his name. You shall not go after other gods, of
the gods of the peoples who are round about you; for the LORD
your God in the midst of you is a jealous God; lest the anger
of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you
from off the face of the earth." (Deuteronomy 6:4,5 10-15)

According to the Apostle Paul, gentile followers of Jesus are
but "wild olive branches grafted into the true olive tree"
of the faith of Abraham (Romans 11:17). This does not make God
a Racist, because Jesus died for the sins of all mankind and because
He lives today (having been raised from the dead) inviting all
men to come to Him as the Savior of all mankind.

...The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that
is, the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess
with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes
with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his
lips and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes
in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction
between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows
his riches upon all who call upon him. For, "every one who
calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans
10:8-13, with quotes from Deuteronomy 30:14, Isaiah 28:16, 49:23,
and Joel 2:32.)

Refering to Yahweh as Israel's legitimate owner and Himself
as Yahweh's legitimate representative, Jesus taught many parables
concerning His next visit to His land. From a Christian point
of view, His return is seen to be a very violent event for all
who have ignored and rejected Him as earth's legal King.

And Jesus began to tell the people this parable: "A man
planted a vineyard, and let it out to tenants, and went into
another country for a long while. When the time came, he sent
a servant to the tenants, that they should give him some of the
fruit of the vineyard; but the tenants beat him, and sent him
away empty-handed. And he sent another servant; him also they
beat and treated shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed.
And he sent yet a third; this one they wounded and cast out.
Then the owner of the vineyard said, `What shall I do? I will
send my beloved son; it may be they will respect him.' But when
the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, `This is the heir;
let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.' And they
cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the
owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those
tenants, and give the vineyard to others." When they heard
this, they said, "God forbid!" But he looked at them
and said, "What then is this that is written: `The very
stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the
corner'? Every one who falls on that stone will be broken to
pieces; but when it falls on any one it will crush him."
(Luke 20:9-18).

The quote Jesus used, by the way, is from Psalm 118 where the
language is similar to that found in Daniel's great prophecy of
the progression of world history since Babylon ruled the world
(Daniel 2). The prophet saw the true Jewish Messiah as a smiting
stone who would crush the empires of the world and set up His
own kingdom at the close of the present age of history, called
in Scripture "the times of the gentiles" (Luke 21:24).

Yahweh vs. Allah

The Arabic word "Allah" is taken by the Moslems to
be the name of the one true God. If this were true then we would
expect the Koran to be consistent with the Bible. The characteristics
of Allah as a Person as gleaned from the Quran should match the
attributes of Yahweh, the covenant-making God of Israel. In fact
there are many differences between Islam and the common traditions
and central beliefs of Judaism and Christianity (See A
Short Summary of Islamic Beliefs and Eschatology).

In his excellent book, Judaism in Islam Prof. Abraham
I. Katsh, (Sepher-Herrmon Press, NY, 1980), presents a detailed
comparison of many verses in the Quran compared with similar passages
in the Hebrew Bible.

For example the Islamic Shahadah is evidently the equivalent
of the Hebrew Shema', "Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the
Lord is One." (Deut. 6:4) The Shema' comes from the hand
of Moses about 1400 BC.

In the Koran, Sura II, verse 256 says, "God, there is
no God but He, the living the self-subsistent..." This verse
appears to be parallel to Isaiah 45:5-8, (written c700 BC): "
I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God;
I gird you, though you do not know me, that men may know, from
the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides
me; I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create
darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the LORD, who do all
these things. "

Prof. Katsh gives many other examples from the Quran to show
how Muhammad sincerely believed at the time he lived that he was
representing, and speaking for, the same God as depicted in the
Bible.

However, Allah is a late-comer in the affairs of Jerusalem,
Yahweh was there much earlier. Yahweh, the God of Israel, makes
many assertions that He alone is the only true God:

"For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above
all gods. For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he
is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples
are idols; but the LORD made the heavens." (Psalm 96:3-5)

Psalm 82 is a favorite of both Christians and Jews,

"God [Elohim, as in Genesis 1] has taken his place in
the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
'How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the
wicked? Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain
the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak
and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.' They
[other gods] have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk
about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I say, 'You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless,
you shall die like men, and fall like any prince.' Arise,
O God, judge the earth; for to thee belong all the nations!"

The God of Israel is the God of all Peoples

The Temple Mount and its ownership is not merely a Jewish issue
which draws some interest and support from Christians because
of the Temple Mount was important in the life of Jesus and was
the site where the church came into existence on the Day of Pentecost.
(Acts 2). Isaiah the prophet wrote of the end of the time period
in which we are now living:

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain
[government of the earth by Yahweh] of the house of the LORD
shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall
be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to
it, and many peoples [the nations] shall come, and say: "Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the
God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk
in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

He [Messiah] shall judge between the nations, and shall decide
for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.
For thou hast [temporarily] rejected thy people, the house of
Jacob, because they are full of diviners from the east and of
soothsayers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with
foreigners. Their land is filled with silver and gold, and there
is no end to their treasures; their land is filled with horses,
and there is no end to their chariots. Their land is filled with
idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their
own fingers have made. So man is humbled, and men are brought
low-- forgive them not! Enter into the rock, and hide in the
dust from before the terror of the LORD, and from the glory of
his majesty. The haughty looks of man shall be brought low, and
the pride of men shall be humbled; and the LORD alone will be
exalted in that day.

For the LORD of hosts [Yahweh Sabaoth] has a day against all
that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high;
against all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up; and against
all the oaks of Bashan; against all the high mountains, and against
all the lofty hills; against every high tower, and against every
fortified wall; against all the ships of Tarshish, and against
all the beautiful craft. And the haughtiness of man shall be
humbled, and the pride of men shall be brought low; and the LORD
alone will be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly
pass away. And men shall enter the caves of the rocks and the
holes of the ground, from before the terror of the LORD, and
from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth.
In that day men will cast forth their idols of silver and their
idols of gold, which they made for themselves to worship, to
the moles and to the bats, to enter the caverns of the rocks
and the clefts of the cliffs, from before the terror of the LORD,
and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the
earth. Turn away from man in whose nostrils is breath, for of
what account is he?

The Third Temple which is now being planned for the Temple
Mount, the temple mentioned three times in the New Testament as
being in existence at the time Jesus Christ returns to earth,
is clearly a temple intended not just for Jews, but for all peoples,

"...for my house shall be called a house of prayer for
all peoples." (Isaiah 56:7b)

Why do the Nations Rage?

Not only are Allah and Yahweh in conflict over the ownership
of Jerusalem, the pagan gods of all the nations (the "gods"
of the goyim---who are no gods) are arrayed against the
true and living God as well. The intensity of this conflict against
Yahweh is escalating rapidly in our day. It is the kings of the
earth, empowered by their own ambitions and goals, who will ultimately
come to Jerusalem in war. They will openly oppose both God and
the Anointed King whom Yahweh has already set upon a throne in
Zion. Few will admit today that by their apathy and indifference
to God, they are acting out their enmity and hatred of God. But
in the days which lie ahead anarchy against the true Lord of the
universe will come out of hiding and into the open. Men will dare
to openly fight against God!

Though Jerusalem has been overrun at least 18 times by foreign
armies, the great invasion described by Zechariah---most likely
it will be World War III---has not yet occurred. It will come
at the end of the age in which we now live, probably very soon
in history. Meanwhile the Second Psalm of David sums up the conflict
of the ages over Jerusalem---and God's final solution:

Psalm 2 (KJV)

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a
vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel
together,
against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,
"Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords
from us."
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have
them in derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his
sore displeasure.
Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, "Thou
art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them
in pieces like a potter's vessel."
Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of
the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when
his wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

The King James Version is familiar to many because the text
is used in a well-known chorus in Handel's Messiah. The
Revised Standard Version is quite similar,

Psalm 2 RSV

Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel
together,
against the LORD and his anointed, saying,
"Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords
from us."
He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in
his fury, saying,
"I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill."
I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, "You
are my son, today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the
ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces
like a potter's vessel."
Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear, with trembling,
kiss his feet, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way; for
his
wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in
him.

Theologian R.C.
Sproul takes special note of this Psalm as a statement of
God's invisible hand behind and over all governments in the world,

In the eighteenth century the concept of separation of church
and state meant one thing; today it is understood in radically
different terms. Originally the concept pointed to a clear division
of labor between two institutions and guarded the borders between
the two. Today a not-so-subtle shift has occurred, and now the
idea of separation of church and state has come to mean the separation
of state and God. The state wishes to be autonomous, not answerable
or accountable to God. In a word, the government has declared
its independence from God.

This is nothing new in history. In the Middle Ages monarchs
sanctioned their rule by appealing to the theory of the divine
right of kings. Usually coronation was done by the church. In
England the monarch was and still is given the title Defensor
Fide or "Defender of the Faith." But there were
few kings who voluntarily submitted to the authority of God.
Even in theocratic Israel it was the kings who, more often than
not, were leaders in godlessness.

The common resistance of earthly rulers to the reign of God
over them may be seen in the sentiments of Psalm 2...

The psalm reflects a conspiracy among the kings of this world.
They hold a summit meeting in which they declare their independence
from God. They hold a joint council of war and aim the sum of
their military might toward heaven. The response of God is holy
laughter. The arsenal of human weapons is viewed as mere popguns
by the Almighty.

God's derisive laughter quickly turns to wrath as He warns
against the rejection of His rule and that of His anointed. He
rebukes the kings for their folly, warning them that He will
break them with a rod of iron. They are called to rule, not with
the arrogance of pretended autonomy, but with fear and trembling.
The fear and trembling are to be motivated by an awareness that
their authority is a delegated authority. It is extrinsic, not
intrinsic. All authority on heaven and earth has been given by
the Father to the Son. Every lesser authority is subject to Him.

In one sense we say that America is not a theocracy. It differs
in its legal structure and framework from Old Testament Israel.
Our government is secular in nature. But this is only a matter
of degree. All human government is theocratic in the sense that
God is the ultimate ruler over all. Our political leaders may
not be theocratically organized at the human level, but in terms
of Providence they are all inescapably theocratic.

The government of God is part of His work of upholding, or
sustaining, His creation.... (The Invisible Hand: Do All Things
Really Work for Good? by R.C. Sproul, Word Publishing, Dallas,
TX 1996)

In his commentary on the book of Revelation, the last book
of the Christian Scriptures, God's
Final Word, Ray C. Stedman notes that the themes of the Second
Psalm are woven throughout the Book of the Revelation. The Hebrew
title of this Psalm does not attribute it to King David, but Acts
4:25 does. Acts 13:33 says this Psalm is "the second Psalm".
Psalm 2 is often quoted in the New Testament.

God has already set in place His King in Jerusalem, on Mt.
Zion and in the days to come He who always ruled over all the
affairs of men on earth will at last reign directly over us from
Jerusalem answering the ancient prayer Jesus taught His disciples,
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done one earth as it is in
heaven."

A False Peace Before the Real Thing

Before the true Messiah comes to establish lasting peace the
Bible says that a false peace will come to pass in the region---known
as Israel's "covenant with death" (see Isaiah 28). Through
the efforts of a great political and military leader of the Western
world working in cooperation with a false messiah in Israel, a
division of land in Israel between Jews and Arabs will bring out
a what everyone believes will be successful end to current tensions
and violence, (Daniel 11:29). This peace treaty will, however,
suddenly fall apart---and a terrible last war will break out in
Israel. The entire world will be affected and the very survival
of the human race will be in doubt (Matthew 22:24). (For details,
an excellent reference is Ray Stedman's study on The
Olivet Discourse of Jesus).

The hope of the world does not lie in the efforts of men to
bring about an artificial peace. Human hearts and human nature
must be changed and this is the task of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
Peacemakers are to be highly valued in any age and in any situation
of course, (Matthew 5:9)---but real peacemakers must reconcile
men to God before they can reconcile one man to another.

The latter chapters of Isaiah are full of information on the
relationship between the God of Israel and His Servant the Messiah.
In Chapter 43 it is Israel who stands in the place of final authority
as appointed authority over the nations. In Chapter 42 it is the
person of Yahweh's Messiah:

Behold my servant [Messiah], whom I uphold, my chosen, in
whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will
bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up
his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he
will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not fail or be
discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and
the coastlands wait for his law.

Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched
them out, who spread forth the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who
walk in it: "I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as
a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the
eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the LORD, that
is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to graven
images. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new
things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of
them."

Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the end of the
earth! Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the coastlands
and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its cities lift up
their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits; let the inhabitants
of Sela sing for joy, let them shout from the top of the mountains.
Let them give glory to the LORD, and declare his praise in the
coastlands. The LORD goes forth like a mighty man, like a man
of war he stirs up his fury; he cries out, he shouts aloud, he
shows himself mighty against his foes. For a long time I have
held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I
will cry out like a woman in travail, I will gasp and pant. I
will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbage;
I will turn the rivers into islands, and dry up the pools. And
I will lead the blind in a way that they know not, in paths that
they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness
before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These
are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them. They shall
be turned back and utterly put to shame, who trust in graven
images, who say to molten images, "You are our gods."
Hear, you deaf; and look, you blind, that you may see!...

The second Psalm assures us that the Coming King of Kings,
appointed by the God of Israel, will rule the nations "with
a rod of iron." His kingdom will come in power and real authority.
He is the only legitimate of the one true God who is over all
the world. An ancient plainsong expresses the longing of God's
people from all nations for Messiah to come to us at last:

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse,
free Thine own from Satan's tyranny

From depths of hell Thy people save
And give them victory o'er the grave.

by Dr. Michel Calvo[calvolaw@netvision.net.il]
Attorney, Doctor of Law,
Law of International Organizations and International Economic
Relations

YERUSHALIYIM, D.C. (David's Capital), Yom Shlishi (Third
Day -- "Tuesday"), 18 Tishrei, 5761 (Gregorian Date:
October 17, 2000) (Hijri Date: 19 Rajab, 1421), Root & Branch:
The concept of giving sovereignty over Jerusalem to G-d is indeed
very interesting from the legal point of view. It is the first
probably time since the Middle Age that reference in modern International
Law is made to G-d and the results are indeed astonishing.

Non-believers are certainly uneasy with such a strange idea
since how could sovereignty belong to someone who does not exist?
Pantheists must be puzzled. For Polytheists the earthly conflict
is not solved but transposed to a higher degree in heavens: the
fight for sovereignty over Jerusalem will continue between the
various gods.

Scholars and lawyers accustomed to analyze legal questions
"rationally" are at loss. The attributes, legal personality
and powers of the Almighty have no relevant legal doctrine or
precedent, except in monotheistic religions.

For European statesmen, any agreed compromise is acceptable
as long as their interests are not prejudiced. To confer sovereignty
to G-d serves their interest: all humans, being G-d's children,
have a direct line to Jerusalem. Consequently, Jerusalem has not
only become international but supranational.

Leaders supposed to be aware of the consequences of their acts
such as Clinton, Mubarak, Ehud Olmert, propose that sovereignty
should be given to G-d. So did the late King Hussein, according
to Avraham Burg, Speaker of the Knesset. They all believe in their
respective manner in the existence of one Creator, as do most
Jews, Arabs, Protestants and Catholics.

Giving back sovereignty to G-d is these days becoming a serious
issue. This concept deserves to be "explored" as M.K.
Burg personally suggested before the European Parliament.

Scholars of International Law accept that "natural law"
derived from divine law.

"Modern International Law originated in the early Middle
Ages when the influence of the Catholic Church was predominant
in Europe...prohibition to wage wars on certain days of the week
-- God's Truce and their incidence, prohibition of attacking clerics,
merchants, women and certain other groups, God's Peace" were
taken seriously at that time.

"The pope was at the beginning claiming universal sovereignty...The
Christian concept of International Law took over from Greek and
Roman antiquity the idea of a divine eternal law reflected in
man's consciousness as natural law..." [Manual of the Terminology
of Public International Law (Peace) and International Organizations
by Dr. I. Paenson, Bruylant, 1983, p. 18]

According to this theory the Almighty's sovereignty over Jerusalem
should not raise difficulties.

Who is sovereign in International Law? According to English
Jurist J. Austin (1789-1859), a sovereign is: "a determinate
individual or body of individuals, owing no allegiance to any
body laying down the law, i.e. a command which obliges to follow
a rule of conduct which is obeyed by determinate inferior beings,
on pain of sanctions".

This earthly legal criteria does not seem to be applicable
since G-d cannot be reduced to an individual or body of individuals.
When the parties involved in the negotiations on Jerusalem confer
sovereignty to the Almighty, they should take into account that
G-d's rules become thereby applicable. The Bible, the Greek ("New")
Testament and the Qur'an contain rules of conduct as well as sanctions
to be applied. The Creator being eternal, the laws given are considered
eternal.

The Bible is very meticulous. Certain laws contained therein
are difficult to comprehend while others are beyond human understanding.
The experience of scholars of Jewish Law for 3,500 years should
be helpful to understand the applicable rules.

G-d commanded us to appoint (human) judges to apply these laws.
But should the appointed judges in Jerusalem apply Jewish Law
only? What about Catholic Canon Law or the Islamic Shari'a?

The Catholic Church considers that it has a representative
of G-d and Jesus ("Christ") on earth who may enact rules
and sanctions. This representative is the Pope. Consequently sovereignty,
if given to G-d, is to be exercised by the Pope and he will apply
Catholic Canon Law.

The only sources available are the holy scriptures of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam.

I am not convinced that Chairman Abdul Rauf el-Chodbi el-Husseini
("Yasser Arafat") would be willing to apply the following
verses from the Qur'an: Surah 45:16 and Surah 7:137 (please see
below).

Here are some excerpts from the Bible, the Greek Testament
and the Qur'an, in chronological order:

THE BIBLE:

"For the love of Zion, I shall not keep silent, for Jerusalem's
sake I will not rest until her vindication go forth as brightness
and its liberation as a burning torch". [Isaiah 62: 1]

"Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places
of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed
Jerusalem". [Isaiah 52: 9]

"And the Lord thy God will bring you back into the land
which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and will
do you good and multiply you above your fathers". [Deuteronomy
30: 5]

"...the nations will know that I am the Lord....And I
shall take you from among the nations, I shall gather you from
all countries and shall bring you back on your own land....I shall
put within you My spirit and I shall cause you to follow my statutes
and keep my laws". [Ezekiel 36: 23-27) (emphasis added)

From these excerpts it clearly appears that, for Jews, Jewish
Law (Halacha), and not limited to Jerusalem, is applicable.

THE GREEK TESTAMENT:

"Think not that I have come to abolish the law or the
prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them"
[Matthew 5: 17]

"For truly, I say it to you, till heaven and earth will
pass away, not an iota, not a dot will be erased from the Law
(of Moses), until all is accomplished". [Matthew 5: 18]

"Whoever then suppresses one of the least of these commandments
and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven;
but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in
the Kingdom of Heaven". [Matthew 5:19]

Consequently the law of Moses should apply in Jerusalem.

THE QUR'AN:

"We chose them (Children of Israel) on the basis of knowledge,
above the worlds; and gave them such signs as constituted an experience
manifest" [Surah 44:32-33]

"We bestowed upon the Children of Israel the Book, the
Jurisdiction and the Prophethood; We provided them with good things
and gave them precedence over the worlds" [Surah 45:16] (emphasis
added)

In addition to the extent of G-d's delegation of power to the
"Children of Israel" does the Koran underline the boundary
of the Land ? Surprisingly the answer is positive:

"And We caused the people (Jews) who had been oppressed
to inherit the east and west of the (Holy) land on which We had
bestowed blessing; the good word of the Lord was fulfilled upon
the Children of Israel for their patience..." [Surah 7:137]

"O, my people, enter the Holy land which Allah hath written
down as yours and turn not back, to your rearward so as to be
rendered losers". [Surah 5:21]

"There after We said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell
in the land, and when the promise of the Hereafter comes, We shall
bring you all in a group" [Surah 17:104]

The intention of those who proposed to confer sovereignty to
G-d, was to make sure that no earthly power exercise sovereignty
exclusively over Jerusalem. If they are not ready to accept the
implications, i.e. to apply the law of the sovereign, it would
be more appropriate to state that no one will have sovereignty
over Jerusalem. A sovereign whose law is inapplicable is not a
sovereign.

This being said, form a legal point of view, giving sovereignty
to G-d is, surprisingly, possible. All three monotheistic religions
have G-d's commandments written in their respective scriptures.
Some believe that G-d's sovereignty will apply anyway sooner or
later.

Assuming for an instant that giving sovereignty over Jerusalem
to the Almighty implies intrinsically the application of His laws,
then the first question is whether Muslims and Christians are
ready to accept that only the "Children of Israel" have
jurisdiction. In this case, the political conflict would become
an inter-religious conflict.

Any discussion of the problem of sovereignty over Jerusalem
necessarily means involvement in a kind of investigation that
has political, cultural, psychological and religious implications.

For a Jew or a Muslim, religious or secular, thinking of Jerusalem
means to feel reason and sentiment mingled together.

In this paper I do not want to enter into specific features
directly connected with politics but, as a Muslim scholar and
a man of religion, only to try and determine whether, from an
Islamic point of view, there is some well-grounded theological
reason that makes it impossible for Muslims to accept the idea
of recognizing Jerusalem both as an Islamic holy place and as
the capital of the State of Israel.

First, I would like to underline that the idea of considering
Jewish immigration to Eretz Israel as a western "invasion"
and Zionists as new "colonizers" is very recent and
has no relation to the basic features of Islamic faith.

According to the Qur'an, no person, people or religious community
can claim a permanent right of possession over a certain territory,
since the earth belongs exclusively to God, Who is free to entrust
sovereign right to everyone He likes and for as long as He likes:

"Say: 'O God, King of the kingdom, Thou givest the kingdom
to whom Thou pleasest, and Thou strippest off the kingdom from
whom Thou pleasest; Thou endurest with honour whom Thou pleasest,
and Thou bringest low whom Thou pleasest; all the best is in
Thy hand. Verily, Thou hast power over all things". [Qur'an,
Sura 3:26, "The Imrans"]

From this verse one can deduce a basic principle of the monotheistic
philosophy of history: God can choose as He likes as to relationships
between peoples and countries; sometimes He gives a land to a
people, and sometime He takes His possession back and gives it
to another people.

In general terms, one might say that He gives as a reward for
obedience and takes back as a punishment for wickedness, but this
rule does not permit us to say that God's ways are always plain
and clear to our understanding.

The idea of Islam as a factor that prevents Arabs from recognizing
any sovereign right of Jews over Palestine is quite recent and
can by no means be found in Islamic classical sources. To see
anti-Zionism as a direct consequence of Islam is a form of explicit
misunderstanding which implies the transformation of Islam from
a religion into a secularized ideology.

This was originally done by the late Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin
al-Husseini, who was responsible for most of the Arab defeats
and during World War II collaborated with Adolf Hitler.

Later, Jamal el-Din Abd el-Nasser based his policy on Pan-Arabism,
hate for the Jews and alliance with the Soviet Union. All these
doctrines were the real cause of Arab backwardness, and most of
Nasser's mistakes were afterwards corrected by the martyr Anwar
Sadat.

After the defeat of Nasserism, the fundamentalist movements
made anti-Zionism an outstanding part of their propaganda, trying
to describe the so-called "fight for liberation of Palestine"
as rooted in Islamic tradition and derived from religious principles.

This plan for the ideologization of Islam as an instrument
of political struggle nevertheless encounters a significant obstacle,
since both Qur'an and Torah indicate quite clearly that the link
between the Children of Israel and the Land of Canaan does not
depend on any kind of colonization project but directly on the
will of God Almighty.

As we learn from Jewish and Islamic Scriptures, God, through
His chosen servant Moses, decided to free the offspring of Jacob
from slavery in Egypt and to make them the inheritors of the Promised
Land. Whoever claims that Jewish sovereignty over Palestine is
something recent and dependent on political machinations is in
fact denying the history of revelation and prophecy, as well as
the clear teaching of the Holy Books.

The Qur'an cites the exact words in which Moses ordered the
Israelites to conquer the Land:

"And [remember] when Moses said to his people: 'O my
people, call in remembrance the favour of God unto you, when
he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you
what He had not given to any other among the people. O my people,
enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and turn
not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your
own ruin". [Qur'an, Sura 5:22-23, "The Table"]

Moreoever -- and fundamentalists always forget this point --
the Holy Qur'an quite openly refers to the reinstatement of the
Jews in the Land before the Last Judgment, where it says:

"And thereafter We said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell
securely in the Promised Land'. And when the last warning will
come to pass, We will gather you together in a mingled crowd".
[Qur'an, Sura 17:104, "The Night Journey"]

The most common argument against Islamic acknowledgement of
Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem is that, since al-Quds is a
holy place for Muslims, they cannot accept its being ruled by
non-Muslims, because such acceptance would be a betrayal of Islam.

Before expressing our point of view about this question, we
must reflect upon the reason that Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque
hold such a sacred position in Islam. As everyone knows, the definition
of Jerusalem as an Islamic holy place depends on al-Mi'raj, the
Ascension of the Prophet Muhammad to heaven, which began from
the Holy Rock.

While remembering this, we must admit that there is no real
link between al-Mi'raj and sovereign rights over Jerusalem, since
when al-Mi'raj took place the City was not under Islamic, but
under Byzantine administration. Moreover, the Qur'an expressly
recognizes that Jerusalem plays the same role for Jews that Mecca
has for Muslims.

We read:

"...They would not follow thy direction of prayer (qibla),
nor art thou to follow their direction of prayer; nor indeed
will they follow each other's direction of prayer..." [Qur'an,
Sura 2:145, "The Cow"]

All Qur'anic commentators explain that "thy qibla"
is obviously the Kaba of Mecca, while "their qibla"
refers to the Temple Area in Jerusalem.

To quote just one of the most important of them, we read in
Qadi Baydawi's Commentary:

As opposed to what "Islamic" fundamentalists continuously
claim, the Book of Islam -- as we have just now seen -- recognizes
Jerusalem as the Jewish direction of prayer. Some Muslim exegetes
also quote the Book of Daniel as proof of this (Daniel 6:10).

After exhibiting the most relevant Qur'anic passages in this
connection, one easily concludes that, as no one wishes to deny
Muslims complete sovereignty over Mecca, from an Islamic point
of view there is no sound theological reason to deny the Jews
the same right over Jerusalem.

If we consider ourselves as religious men, we must necessarily
include justice among our qualities. As regards the argument,
we have to admit that the same idea of justice requires that we
treat Jews, Christians and Muslims equally. No community can demand
for itself privileges that it is not ready to recognize to others.

We know that Roman Catholics consider Rome their own capital,
and the fact that city has the largest mosque in Europe and an
ancient Jewish community does not alter its role as the center
of Catholicism.

Even more can be said of Mecca: it is the main religious center
for Muslims the world over and is completely under Islamic administration.

Respecting this principle of fair-mindedness, we necessarily
conclude that the Israelis as a nation and the Jews as a religion
must have their own political and ethnic capital, under their
sole administration, even though it contains certain places regarded
as sacred by the other two Abrahamic faiths.

To my mind, this is the only realistic ground for any discussion
of the future of the Holy City. The other parties must understand
that Jews will never agree to have less rights than the other
religions, and that Israelis will never agree to see David's City
divided into two parts.

If everyone was happy to see the Berlin Wall destroyed, it
was because the very idea of forced separation within a single
city is something offensive to human sensitivity. We cannot even
think of creating another Berlin in the heart of the Middle East.

Of course, the idea of "two Jerusalems", if ever
realized, will by no means be a solution, but a source of new
troubles and conflicts.

It is quite clear that the future of Jerusalem must depend
on a general agreement, and in our opinion the only reliable partners
for Israel seem to be the Holy See and the Hashemite Kingdom of
Jordan. They must understand that Israelis will never agree even
to discuss the possibility of dividing their capital and spiritual
center, while Israel must grant them considerable autonomy in
the administration of their respective Holy Places.

Those who speak of Jerusalem as the future capital of "two
different states" know very well that this kind of proposal
has no basis in reality. It is time to suggest imaginative solutions,
to become involved in a global project for the development of
the Middle East as a whole, so that peaceful coexistence with
Israel can make a real contribution to overcoming the backwardness
of most of the Islamic countries.

The administration of the Holy Places in Jerusalem is a quite
complicated issue, and it is not possible here to enter into details.

We would nevertheless like to mention something that appears
unbearable for any person of religious consciousness: the fact
that at present the Islamic administration of bayt al-maqdis permits
Jews to visit the Temple Mount, but not to pray there.

There are special officials in the area whose task is to ensure
that Jewish visitors on the Temple Mount are not moving their
lips in prayer. To my mind, this is clearly opposed to Islamic
prescriptions and rules.

We have seen that the Holy Qur'an declares the Rock a qibla
for Jews; how, then, is it possible that -- in the name of Islam
-- someone dares to forbid Jews to pray in the place that God
has appointed as their qibla?

This is a clear example of a case in which pseudo-religious
principles may work against the real spirit of religion.

Moreover, we must ask: is it possible for someone who believes
in God to forbid another human to pray? What kind of religion
can let us interfere in the relationship between the Creator and
His creature?

On this point the Qur'an says:

"When My servants ask thee concerning Me, I am indeed
close to them: I answer the prayer of every suppliant who calleth
on Me..." [Qur'an, Sura 22:186, "Pilgrimage"]

This verse explains that God is always close to His servants
when they are praying. Wherever we are and whoever we are, according
to the Qur'an we can be sure that God is listening to our prayers
and will answer them, although, of course, we are not always able
to understand His response.

This being the case, no-one who believes in God can possibly
prevent others praying, notwithstanding the fact that they belong
to another religious tradition. The very idea of opposing someone's
prayers reveals a really deep lack of faith.

As to Jewish-Muslim relationships, we heartily agree with the
decision of Samuel Sirat, President of the Council of European
Rabbis: till now inter-religious dialogue has been hampered by
political reasons; but, from a theological point of view, dialogue
between Jews and Muslims is easier than, say, dialogue between
Jews and Christians.

In the past, Ibn Gabirol [Avucebri], Maimonides, Ibn Sina [Avicenna]
and Ibn Rushd [Averroes] were not isolated intellectuals, but
part of an intercommunication game that went beyond confessional
links. If we reflect on the level of inter-religious dialogue
in past centuries, we must frankly admit that in this respect
we have been moving backwards.

True, one can blame this on the political situation, but that
does not free intellectuals and men of religion of their responsibility.
Today, looking toward the future, we must again create the same
kind of intellectual atmosphere, till it will become common for
Islamic theologians to read Buber and Levinas, and for Jewish
scholars to study the works of Sha'rawi and Ashmawi.

Israeli intellectuals, for their part, must be ready to understand
that a new attitude is emerging among some Islamic thinkers. Many
of us are now ready to admit that hostility for Israel has been
a great mistake, perhaps the worst mistake Muslims have made in
the second half of this century.

For those Muslim leaders who live in Europe, in democratic
countries and not under dictatorship, this declaration is not
so dangerous as for those of our brothers who live in the Arab
countries.

We know that, in those countries too, there is a certain part
of the educated population that does not blindly accept anti-Israel
propaganda; but freedom of expression is considerably limited
in those countries.

It is very important for us to verify that we are not alone
in our cultural activity, in our efforts not to repeat past mistakes;
we must know that there is someone else who appreciates and shares
our goals.

Readiness to understand the signs of the times means that we
must recognize that times are ready for Jews and Muslims to recognize
each other once again as a branch of the tree of monotheism, as
brothers descended from the same father, Abraham, the forerunner
of faith in the Living God.

In the field of comparative studies, there are broad prospects
for common work. We can investigate the past and understand the
common features in the development of Kabbalah and Tasawwuf, or
study the mutual influence of Jewish Halakhah and Islamic Sharia.

Apart from these examples, our general guideline must be the
principle that, the more we discover our common roots, the more
we can hope for a common future of peace and prosperity.

Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi

Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi has been a lecturer in the
Department of the History of Religion at the University of Velletri
(Rome, Italy). In 1987, after completing his secular and religious
education in Rome and Cairo, where he studied Islamic sciences
under Shaykh Ismail al-Khalwati and Shaykh Ahmad al-Battawi, he
was asked to serve as an Imam for the Italian Islamic Community.
In addition to numerous Masters Degrees, Prof. Palazzi hold a
Ph.D in Islamic Sciences by decree of the Grand Mufti of the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia. In 1989 he was appointed a member of the Board
of Directors of the Italian Muslim Association (AMI) and afterward
elected its Secretary General. In 1991 he was asked to act as
Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community
(ICCII), with a program based on the development of Islamic education
in Italy, refutation of fundamentalism and fanaticism, and deep
involvement in inter-religious dialogue, especially with Jews
and Christians. In 1997 Prof. Palazzi's essay entitled "The
Jewish-Moslem Dialogue and the Question of Jerusalem" was
published by the Institute of the World Jewish Congress. In 1997
Prof. Palazzi joined the International Council of the Root & Branch
Association. In 1998, Prof. Palazzi and Dr. Asher Eder (Jerusalem,
Israel) co-founded the Islam-Israel Fellowship of the Root & Branch
Association.

Years that Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish People:
(3, 000).

Number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew bible:
(657).

City to which all Jews are required to make pilgrimage: (Jerusalem).

Years that Jerusalem has been the capital of any Muslim or
Arab people: (0).

Number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran: (0).

City to which all Muslims are enjoined to make pilgrimage:
(Mecca).

Family considered the Guardian of Muslim Holy Places: the Al-Saudis,
Rulers of Saudi Arabia. Number of times leading members of this
family prayed at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem when Jordan controlled
the city: (0).

Number of synagogues in the Jewish Quarter at the time of Jordanian
conquest in 1948: (58).

Number of synagogues in the Jewish Quarter destroyed or desecrated
by the Jordanians: (58).

Nationality of officers who led the Arab Legion in seizing
the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in 1948 and forcing all the Jews
out: (British).

Arab regime that prohibited Christians from acquiring property
in East Jerusalem, compelled Christians to close schools and businesses
on Muslim holidays, and to include Muslim teachings in Christian
schools, and constructed mosques next to churches to prevent Christian
expansion: (Jordan 1948-1967)

Number of Christians in East Jerusalem in 1948 when Jordan
seized control: (25,000).

Number of Christians in East Jerusalem at the end of Jordanian
rule in 1967.(10,800).

Muslim population of Jerusalem in 1922: 13,413; 1994:145,000.
Christian population in 1922.- 14,699; and 1994: 15,000.

Jewish population of Jerusalem in 1922.- 33,971; and 1994.-
406,000.

Number of trees planted by Israel in and around Jerusalem in
recent decades: 11 million.

Number of acres transformed into "green belt" at
parks in and around Jerusalem: nearly 9,000.

Religious Jews throughout the world recite their prayers 3
times a day while facing toward Jerusalem.

Muslims throughout the world, when they recite their prayers,
face toward Mecca.

The Camp David II summit and the "Aqsa intifada"
that followed have confirmed what everyone had long known: Jerusalem
is the knottiest issue facing Arab and Israeli negotiators.

In part, the problem is practical: the Palestinians insist
that the capital of Israel serve as the capital of their future
state too, something Israelis are loathe to accept. But mostly,
the problem is religious: the ancient city has sacred associations
for Jews and Muslims alike (and Christians too, of course; but
Christians today no longer make an independent political claim
to Jerusalem), and both insist on sovereignty over their overlapping
sacred areas.

In Jerusalem, theological and historical claims matter; they
are the functional equivalent to the deed to the city and have
direct operational consequences. Jewish and Muslim connections
to the city therefore require evaluation.

Comparing Religious Claims

The Jewish connection to Jerusalem is an ancient and powerful
one. Judaism made Jerusalem a holy city over three thousand years
ago and through all that time Jews remained steadfast to it. Jews
pray in its direction, mention its name constantly in prayers,
close the Passover service with the wistful statement "Next
year in Jerusalem," and recall the city in the blessing at
the end of each meal. The destruction of the Temple looms very
large in Jewish consciousness; remembrance takes such forms as
a special day of mourning, houses left partially unfinished, a
woman's makeup or jewelry left incomplete, and a glass smashed
during the wedding ceremony. In addition, Jerusalem has had a
prominent historical role, is the only capital of a Jewish state,
and is the only city with a Jewish majority during the whole of
the past century. In the words of its current mayor, Jerusalem
represents "the purist expression of all that Jews prayed
for, dreamed of, cried for, and died for in the two thousand years
since the destruction of the Second Temple."

What about Muslims? Where does Jerusalem fit in Islam and Muslim
history? It is not the place to which they pray, is not once mentioned
by name in prayers, and it is connected to no mundane events in
Muhammad's life. The city never served as capital of a sovereign
Muslim state, and it never became a cultural or scholarly center.
Little of political import by Muslims was initiated there.

One comparison makes this point most clearly: Jerusalem appears
in the Jewish Bible 669 times and Zion (which usually means Jerusalem,
sometimes the Land of Israel) 154 times, or 823 times in all.
The Christian Bible mentions Jerusalem 154 times and Zion 7 times.
In contrast, the columnist Moshe Kohn notes, Jerusalem and Zion
appear as frequently in the Qur'an "as they do in the Hindu
Bhagavad-Gita, the Taoist Tao-Te Ching, the Buddhist Dhamapada
and the Zoroastrian Zend Avesta"-which is to say, not once.

The city being of such evidently minor religious importance,
why does it now loom so large for Muslims, to the point that a
Muslim Zionism seems to be in the making across the Muslim world?
Why do Palestinian demonstrators take to the streets shouting
"We will sacrifice our blood and souls for you, Jerusalem"
and their brethren in Jordan yell "We sacrifice our blood
and soul for Al-Aqsa"? Why does King Fahd of Saudi Arabia
call on Muslim states to protect "the holy city [that] belongs
to all Muslims across the world"? Why did two surveys of
American Muslims find Jerusalem their most pressing foreign policy
issue?

Because of politics. An historical survey shows that the stature
of the city, and the emotions surrounding it, inevitably rises
for Muslims when Jerusalem has political significance. Conversely,
when the utility of Jerusalem expires, so does its status and
the passions about it. This pattern first emerged during the lifetime
of the Prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century. Since then,
it has been repeated on five occasions: in the late seventh century,
in the twelfth century Countercrusade, in the thirteenth century
Crusades, during the era of British rule (1917-48), and since
Israel took the city in 1967. The consistency that emerges in
such a long period provides an important perspective on the current
confrontation.

I. The Prophet Muhammad

According to the Arabic-literary sources, Muhammad in a.d.
622 fled his home town of Mecca for Medina, a city with a substantial
Jewish population. On arrival in Medina, if not slightly earlier,
the Qur'an adopted a number of practices friendly to Jews: a Yom
Kippur-like fast, a synagogue-like place of prayer, permission
to eat kosher food, and approval to marry Jewish women. Most important,
the Qur'an repudiated the pre-Islamic practice of the Meccans
to pray toward the Ka'ba, the small stone structure at the center
of the main mosque in Mecca. Instead, it adopted the Judaic practice
of facing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during prayer. (Actually,
the Qur'an only mentions the direction as "Syria"; other
information makes it clear that Jerusalem is meant.)

This, the first qibla (direction of prayer) of Islam, did not
last long. The Jews criticized the new faith and rejected the
friendly Islamic gestures; not long after, the Qur'an broke with
them, probably in early 624. The explanation of this change comes
in a Qur'anic verse instructing the faithful no longer to pray
toward Syria but instead toward Mecca. The passage (2:142-52)
begins by anticipating questions about this abrupt change:

The Fools among the people will say: "What has turned
them [the Muslims] from the qibla to which they were always used?"

God then provides the answer:

We appointed the qibla that to which you was used, only to
test those who followed the Messenger [Muhammad] from those who
would turn on their heels [on Islam].

In other words, the new qibla served as a way to distinguish
Muslims from Jews. >From now on, Mecca would be the direction
of prayer:

now shall we turn you to a qibla that shall please you. Then
turn your face in the direction of the Sacred Mosque [in Mecca].
Wherever you are, turn your faces in that direction.

The Qur'an then reiterates the point about no longer paying
attention to Jews:

Even if you were to bring all the signs to the people of the
Book [i.e., Jews], they would not follow your qibla.

Muslims subsequently accepted the point implicit to the Qur'anic
explanation, that the adoption of Jerusalem as qibla was a tactical
move to win Jewish converts. "He chose the Holy House in
Jerusalem in order that the People of the Book [i.e., Jews] would
be conciliated," notes At-Tabari, an early Muslim commentator
on the Qur'an, "and the Jews were glad." Modern historians
agree: W. Montgomery Watt, a leading biographer of Muhammad, interprets
the prophet's "far-reaching concessions to Jewish feeling"
in the light of two motives, one of which was "the desire
for a reconciliation with the Jews."

After the Qur'an repudiated Jerusalem, so did the Muslims:
the first description of the town under Muslim rule comes from
the visiting Bishop Arculf, a Gallic pilgrim, in 680, who reported
seeing "an oblong house of prayer, which they [the Muslims]
pieced together with upright plans and large beams over some ruined
remains." Not for the last time, safely under Muslim control,
Jerusalem became a backwater.

This episode set the mold that would be repeated many times
over succeeding centuries: Muslims take interest religiously in
Jerusalem because of pressing but temporary concerns. Then, when
those concerns lapse, so does the focus on Jerusalem, and the
city's standing greatly diminishes.

II. Umayyads

The second round of interest in Jerusalem occurred during the
rule of the Damascus-based Umayyad dynasty (661-750). A dissident
leader in Mecca, 'Abdullah b. az-Zubayr began a revolt against
the Umayyads in 680 that lasted until his death in 692; while
fighting him, Umayyad rulers sought to aggrandize Syria at the
expense of Arabia (and perhaps also to help recruit an army against
the Byzantine Empire). They took some steps to sanctify Damascus,
but mostly their campaign involved what Amikam Elad of the Hebrew
University calls an "enormous" effort "to exalt
and to glorify" Jerusalem. They may even have hoped to make
it the equal of Mecca.

The first Umayyad ruler, Mu'awiya, chose Jerusalem as the place
where he ascended to the caliphate; he and his successors engaged
in a construction program ­ religious edifices, a palace,
and roads ­ in the city. The Umayyads possibly had plans to
make Jerusalem their political and administrative capital; indeed,
Elad finds that they in effect treated it as such. But Jerusalem
is primarily a city of faith, and, as the Israeli scholar Izhak
Hasson explains, the "Umayyad regime was interested in ascribing
an Islamic aura to its stronghold and center." Toward this
end (as well as to assert Islam's presence in its competition
with Christianity), the Umayyad caliph built Islam's first grand
structure, the Dome of the Rock, right on the spot of the Jewish
Temple, in 688-91. This remarkable building is not just the first
monumental sacred building of Islam but also the only one that
still stands today in roughly its original form.

The next Umayyad step was subtle and complex, and requires
a pause to note a passage of the Qur'an (17:1) describing the
Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey to heaven (isra'):

Glory to He who took His servant by night from the Sacred
Mosque to the furthest mosque. (Subhana allathina asra bi-'abdihi
laylatan min al-masjidi al-harami ila al-masjidi al-aqsa.)

When this Qur'anic passage was first revealed, in about 621,
a place called the Sacred Mosque already existed in Mecca. In
contrast, the "furthest mosque" was a turn of phrase,
not a place. Some early Muslims understood it as metaphorical
or as a place in heaven. And if the "furthest mosque"
did exist on earth, Palestine would seem an unlikely location,
for many reasons. Some of them:

Elsewhere in the Qur'an (30:1), Palestine is called "the
closest land" (adna al-ard).

Palestine had not yet been conquered by the Muslims and contained
not a single mosque.

The "furthest mosque" was apparently identified
with places inside Arabia: either Medina or a town called Ji'rana,
about ten miles from Mecca, which the Prophet visited in 630.

The earliest Muslim accounts of Jerusalem, such as the description
of Caliph 'Umar's reported visit to the city just after the Muslims
conquest in 638, nowhere identify the Temple Mount with the "furthest
mosque" of the Qur'an.

The Qur'anic inscriptions that make up a 240-meter mosaic
frieze inside the Dome of the Rock do not include Qur'an 17:1
and the story of the Night Journey, suggesting that as late as
692 the idea of Jerusalem as the lift-off for the Night Journey
had not yet been established. (Indeed, the first extant inscriptions
of Qur'an 17:1 in Jerusalem date from the eleventh century.)

Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiya (638-700), a close relative of the
Prophet Muhammad, is quoted denigrating the notion that the prophet
ever set foot on the Rock in Jerusalem; "these damned Syrians,"
by which he means the Umayyads, "pretend that God put His
foot on the Rock in Jerusalem, though [only] one person ever
put his foot on the rock, namely Abraham."

Then, in 715, to build up the prestige of their dominions,
the Umayyads did a most clever thing: they built a second mosque
in Jerusalem, again on the Temple Mount, and called this one the
Furthest Mosque (al-masjid al-aqsa, Al-Aqsa Mosque). With this,
the Umayyads retroactively gave the city a role in Muhammad's
life. This association of Jerusalem with al-masjid al-aqsa fit
into a wider Muslim tendency to identify place names found in
the Qur'an: "wherever the Koran mentions a name of an event,
stories were invented to give the impression that somehow, somewhere,
someone, knew what they were about."

Despite all logic (how can a mosque built nearly a century
after the Qur'an was received establish what the Qur'an meant?),
building an actual Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Palestinian historian A.
L. Tibawi writes, "gave reality to the figurative name used
in the Koran." It also had the hugely important effect of
inserting Jerusalem post hoc into the Qur'an and making it more
central to Islam. Also, other changes resulted. Several Qur'anic
passages were re-interpreted to refer to this city. Jerusalem
came to be seen as the site of the Last Judgment. The Umayyads
cast aside the non-religious Roman name for the city, Aelia Capitolina
(in Arabic, Iliya) and replaced it with Jewish-style names, either
Al-Quds (The Holy) or Bayt al-Maqdis (The Temple). They sponsored
a form of literature praising the "virtues of Jerusalem,"
a genre one author is tempted to call "Zionist." Accounts
of the prophet's sayings or doings (Arabic: hadiths, often translated
into English as "Traditions") favorable to Jerusalem
emerged at this time, some of them equating the city with Mecca.
There was even an effort to move the pilgrimage (hajj) from Mecca
to Jerusalem.

Scholars agree that the Umayyads' motivation to assert a Muslim
presence in the sacred city had a strictly utilitarian purpose.
The Iraqi historian Abdul Aziz Duri finds "political reasons"
behind their actions. Hasson concurs:

The construction of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque,
the rituals instituted by the Umayyads on the Temple Mount and
the dissemination of Islamic-oriented Traditions regarding the
sanctity of the site, all point to the political motives which
underlay the glorification of Jerusalem among the Muslims.

Thus did a politically-inspired Umayyad building program lead
to the Islamic sanctification of Jerusalem.

Abbasid Rule

Then, with the Umayyad demise in 750 and the move of the caliph's
capital to Baghdad, "imperial patronage became negligible"
and Jerusalem fell into near-obscurity. For the next three and
a half centuries, books praising this city lost favor and the
construction of glorious buildings not only came to an end but
existing ones fell apart (the dome over the rock collapsed in
1016). Gold was stripped off the dome to pay for Al-Aqsa repair
work. City walls collapsed. Worse, the rulers of the new dynasty
bled Jerusalem and its region country through what F. E. Peters
of New York University calls "their rapacity and their careless
indifference." The city declined to the point of becoming
a shambles. "Learned men are few, and the Christians numerous,"
bemoaned a tenth-century Muslim native of Jerusalem. Only mystics
continued to visit the city.

In a typical put-down, another tenth-century author described
the city as "a provincial town attached to Ramla," a
reference to the tiny, insignificant town serving as Palestine's
administrative center. Elad characterizes Jerusalem in the early
centuries of Muslim rule as "an outlying city of diminished
importance." The great historian S. D. Goitein notes that
the geographical dictionary of al-Yaqut mentions Basra 170 times,
Damascus 100 times, and Jerusalem only once, and that one time
in passing. He concludes from this and other evidence that, in
its first six centuries of Muslim rule, "Jerusalem mostly
lived the life of an out-of-the-way provincial town, delivered
to the exactions of rapacious officials and notables, often also
to tribulations at the hands of seditious fellahin [peasants]
or nomads. . . . Jerusalem certainly could not boast of excellence
in the sciences of Islam or any other fields."

By the early tenth century, notes Peters, Muslim rule over
Jerusalem had an "almost casual" quality with "no
particular political significance." Later too: Al-Ghazali,
sometimes called the "Thomas Aquinas of Islam," visited
Jerusalem in 1096 but not once refers to the Crusaders heading
his way.

III. Early Crusades

The Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 initially aroused
a very mild Muslim response. The Franks did not rate much attention;
Arabic literature written in Crusader-occupied towns tended not
even to mention them . Thus, "calls to jihad at first fell
upon deaf ears," writes Robert Irwin, formerly of the University
of St Andrews in Scotland. Emmanuel Sivan of the Hebrew University
adds that "one does not detect either shock or a sense of
religious loss and humiliation."

Only as the effort to retake Jerusalem grew serious in about
1150 did Muslim leaders seek to rouse jihad sentiments through
the heightening of emotions about Jerusalem. Using the means at
their disposal (hadiths, "virtues of Jerusalem" books,
poetry), their propagandists stressed the sanctity of Jerusalem
and the urgency of its return to Muslim rule. Newly-minted hadiths
made Jerusalem ever-more critical to the Islamic faith; one of
them put words into the Prophet Muhammad's mouth saying that,
after his own death, Jerusalem's falling to the infidels is the
second greatest catastrophe facing Islam. Whereas not a single
"virtues of Jerusalem" volume appeared in the period
1100-50, very many came out in the subsequent half century. In
the 1160s, Sivan notes, "al-Quds propaganda blossomed";
and when Saladin (Salah ad-Din) led the Muslims to victory over
Jerusalem in 1187, the "propaganda campaign . . . attained
its paroxysm." In a letter to his Crusader opponent, Saladin
wrote that the city "is to us as it is to you. It is even
more important to us."

The glow of the reconquest remained bright for several decades
thereafter; for example, Saladin's descendants (known as the Ayyubid
dynasty, which ruled until 1250) went on a great building and
restoration program in Jerusalem, thereby imbuing the city with
a more Muslim character. Until this point, Islamic Jerusalem had
consisted only of the shrines on the Temple Mount; now, for the
first time, specifically Islamic buildings (Sufi convents, schools)
were built in the surrounding city. Also, it was at this time,
Oleg Grabar of Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study notes,
that the Dome of the Rock came to be seen as the exact place where
Muhammad's ascension to heaven (mi'raj) took place during his
Night Journey: if the "furthest mosque" is in Jerusalem,
then Muhammad's Night Journey and his subsequent visit to heaven
logically took place on the Temple Mount-indeed, on the very rock
from which Jesus was thought to have ascended to heaven.

IV. Ayyubids

But once safely back in Muslim hands, interest in Jerusalem
again dropped; "the simple fact soon emerged that al-Quds
was not essential to the security of an empire based in Egypt
or Syria. Accordingly, in times of political or military crisis,
the city proved to be expendable," writes Donald P. Little
of McGill University. In particular, in 1219, when the Europeans
attacked Egypt in the Fifth Crusade, a grandson of Saladin named
al-Mu'azzam decided to raze the walls around Jerusalem, fearing
that were the Franks to take the city with walls, "they will
kill all whom they find there and will have the fate of Damascus
and lands of Islam in their hands." Pulling down Jerusalem's
fortifications had the effect of prompting a mass exodus from
the city and its steep decline.

Also at this time, the Muslim ruler of Egypt and Palestine,
al-Kamil (another of Saladin's grandsons and the brother of al-Mu'azzam),
offered to trade Jerusalem to the Europeans if only the latter
would leave Egypt, but he had no takers. Ten years later, in 1229,
just such a deal was reached when al-Kamil did cede Jerusalem
to Emperor Friedrich II; in return, the German leader promised
military aid to al-Kamil against al-Mu'azzam, now a rival king.
Al-Kamil insisted that the Temple Mount remain in Muslim hands
and "all the practices of Islam" continued to be exercised
there, a condition Friedrich complied with. Referring to his deal
with Frederick, al-Kamil wrote in a remarkably revealing description
of Jerusalem, "I conceded to the Franks only ruined churches
and houses." In other words, the city that had been heroically
regained by Saladin in 1187 was voluntarily traded away by his
grandson just forty-two years later.

On learning that Jerusalem was back in Christian hands, Muslims
felt predictably intense emotions. An Egyptian historian later
wrote that the loss of the city "was a great misfortune for
the Muslims, and much reproach was put upon al-Kamil, and many
were the revilings of him in all the lands." By 1239, another
Ayyubid ruler, an-Nasir Da'ud, managed to expel the Franks from
the city.

But then he too ceded it right back to the Crusaders in return
for help against one of his relatives. This time, the Christians
were less respectful of the Islamic sanctuaries and turned the
Temple Mount mosques into churches.

Their intrusion did not last long; by 1244 the invasion of
Palestine by troops from Central Asia brought Jerusalem again
under the rule of an Ayyubid; and henceforth the city remained
safely under Muslim rule for nearly seven centuries. Jerusalem
remained but a pawn in the Realpolitik of the times, as explained
in a letter from a later Ayyubid ruler, as-Salih Ayyub, to his
son: if the Crusaders threaten you in Cairo, he wrote, and they
demand from you the coast of Palestine and Jerusalem, "give
these places to them without delay on condition they have no foothold
in Egypt."

The psychology at work here bears note: that Christian knights
traveled from distant lands to make Jerusalem their capital made
the city more valuable in Muslim eyes too. "It was a city
strongly coveted by the enemies of the faith, and thus became,
in a sort of mirror-image syndrome, dear to Muslim hearts,"
Sivan explains. And so fractured opinions coalesced into a powerful
sensibility; political exigency caused Muslims ever after to see
Jerusalem as the third most holy city of Islam (thalith al-masajid).

Mamluk and Ottoman Rule

During the Mamluk era (1250-1516), Jerusalem lapsed further
into its usual obscurity ­ capital of no dynasty, economic
laggard, cultural backwater-though its new-found prestige as an
Islamic site remained intact. Also, Jerusalem became a favorite
place to exile political leaders, due to its proximity to Egypt
and its lack of walls, razed in 1219 and not rebuilt for over
three centuries, making Jerusalem easy prey for marauders. These
notables endowed religious institutions, especially religious
schools, which in the aggregate had the effect of re-establishing
Islam in the city. But a general lack of interest translated into
decline and impoverishment. Many of the grand buildings, including
the Temple Mount sanctuaries, were abandoned and became dilapidated
as the city became depopulated. A fourteenth-century author bemoaned
the paucity of Muslims visiting Jerusalem. The Mamluks so devastated
Jerusalem that the town's entire population at the end of their
rule amounted to a miserable 4,000 souls.

The Ottoman period (1516-1917) got off to an excellent start
when Süleyman the Magnificent rebuilt the city walls in 1537-41
and lavished money in Jerusalem (for example, assuring its water
supply), but things then quickly reverted to type. Jerusalem now
suffered from the indignity of being treated as a tax farm for
non-resident, one-year (and very rapacious) officials. "After
having exhausted Jerusalem, the pasha left," observed the
French traveler François-René Chateaubriand in 1806.
At times, this rapaciousness prompted uprisings. The Turkish authorities
also raised funds for themselves by gouging European visitors;
in general, this allowed them to make fewer efforts in Jerusalem
than in other cities to promote the city's economy. The tax rolls
show soap as its only export. So insignificant was Jerusalem,
it was sometimes a mere appendage to the governorship of Nablus
or Gaza. Nor was scholarship cultivated: in 1670, a traveler reported
that standards had dropped so low that even the preacher at Al-Aqsa
Mosque spoke a low standard of literary Arabic. The many religious
schools of an earlier era disappeared. By 1806, the population
had again dropped, this time to under 9,000 residents.

Muslims during this long era could afford to ignore Jerusalem,
writes the historian James Parkes, because the city "was
something that was there, and it never occurred to a Muslim that
it would not always be there," safely under Muslim rule.
Innumerable reports during these centuries from Western pilgrims,
tourists, and diplomats in Jerusalem told of the city's execrable
condition. George Sandys in 1611 found that "Much lies waste;
the old buildings (except a few) all ruined, the new contemptible."
Constantin Volney, one of the most scientific of observers, noted
in 1784 Jerusalem's "destroyed walls, its debris-filled moat,
its city circuit choked with ruins." "What desolation
and misery!" wrote Chateaubriand. Gustav Flaubert of Madame
Bovary fame visited in 1850 and found "Ruins everywhere,
and everywhere the odor of graves. It seems as if the Lord's curse
hovers over the city. The Holy City of three religions is rotting
away from boredom, desertion, and neglect." "Hapless
are the favorites of heaven," commented Herman Melville in
1857. Mark Twain in 1867 found that Jerusalem "has lost all
its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village."

The British government recognized the minimal Muslim interest
in Jerusalem during World War I. In negotiations with Sharif Husayn
of Mecca in 1915-16 over the terms of the Arab revolt against
the Ottomans, London decided not to include Jerusalem in territories
to be assigned to the Arabs because, as the chief British negotiator,
Henry McMahon, put it, "there was no place of sufficient
importance further south" of Damascus "to which the
Arabs attached vital importance."

True to this spirit, the Turkish overlords of Jerusalem abandoned
Jerusalem rather than fight for it in 1917, evacuating it just
in advance of the British troops. One account indicates they were
even prepared to destroy the holy city. Jamal Pasha, the Ottoman
commander-in-chief, instructed his Austrian allies to "blow
Jerusalem to hell" should the British enter the city. The
Austrians therefore had their guns trained on the Dome of the
Rock, with enough ammunition to keep up two full days of intensive
bombardment. According to Pierre van Paasen, a journalist, that
the dome still exists today is due to a Jewish artillery captain
in the Austrian army, Marek Schwartz, who rather than respond
to the approaching British troops with a barrage on the Islamic
holy places, "quietly spiked his own guns and walked into
the British lines."

V. British Rule

In modern times, notes the Israeli scholar Hava Lazarus-Yafeh,
Jerusalem "became the focus of religious and political Arab
activity only at the beginning of the [twentieth] century."
She ascribes the change mainly to "the renewed Jewish activity
in the city and Judaism's claims on the Western Wailing Wall."
British rule over city, lasting from 1917 to 1948, then galvanized
a renewed passion for Jerusalem. Arab politicians made Jerusalem
a prominent destination during the British Mandatory period. A
contingent of Muslim notables, for example, went to Jerusalem
in 1931 for an international congress to mobilize global Muslim
opinion on behalf of the Palestinians. Iraqi leaders frequently
turned up in Jerusalem, demonstrably praying at Al-Aqsa and giving
emotional speeches. Most famously, King Faysal of Iraq visited
the city and made a ceremonial entrance to the Temple Mount using
the same gate as did Caliph 'Umar when the city was first conquered
in 638. Iraqi involvement also included raising funds for an Islamic
university in Jerusalem, and setting up a consulate and an information
office there.

The Palestinian leader (and mufti of Jerusalem) Hajj Amin al-Husayni
made the Temple Mount central to his anti-Zionist political efforts.
Husayni brought a contingent of Muslim notables to Jerusalem in
1931 for an international congress to mobilize global Muslim opinion
on behalf of the Palestinians. He also exploited the draw of the
Islamic holy places in Jerusalem to find international Muslim
support for his campaign against Zionism. For example, he engaged
in fundraising in several Arab countries to restore the Dome of
the Rock and Al-Aqsa, sometimes by sending out pictures of the
Dome of the Rock under a Star of David; his efforts did succeed
in procuring the funds to restore these monuments to their former
glory.

Perhaps most indicative of the change in mood was the claim
that the Prophet Muhammad had tethered his horse to the western
wall of the Temple Mount. As established by Shmuel Berkowitz,
Muslim scholars over the centuries had variously theorized about
the prophet tying horse to the eastern or southern walls-but not
one of them before the Muslim-Jewish clashes at the Western Wall
in 1929 ever associated this incident with the western side. Once
again, politics drove Muslim piousness regarding Jerusalem.

Jordanian Rule

Sandwiched between British and Israeli eras, Jordanian rule
over Jerusalem in 1948-67 offers a useful control case; true to
form, when Muslims took the Old City (which contains the sanctuaries)
they noticeably lost interest in it. An initial excitement stirred
when the Jordanian forces captured the walled city in 1948 --
as evidenced by the Coptic bishop's crowning King 'Abdullah as
"King of Jerusalem" in November of that year-but then
the usual ennui set in. The Hashemites had little affection for
Jerusalem, where some of their worst enemies lived and where 'Abdullah
was assassinated in 1951. In fact, the Hashemites made a concerted
effort to diminish the holy city's importance in favor of their
capital, Amman. Jerusalem had served as the British administrative
capital, but now all government offices there (save tourism) were
shut down; Jerusalem no longer had authority even over other parts
of the West Bank. The Jordanians also closed some local institutions
(e.g., the Arab Higher Committee, the Supreme Muslim Council)
and moved others to Amman (the treasury of the waqf, or religious
endowment).

Jordanian efforts succeeded: once again, Arab Jerusalem became
an isolated provincial town, less important than Nablus. The economy
so stagnated that many thousands of Arab Jerusalemites left the
town: while the population of Amman increased five-fold in the
period 1948-67, that of Jerusalem grew by just 50 percent. To
take out a bank loan meant traveling to Amman. Amman had the privilege
of hosting the country's first university and the royal family's
many residences. Jerusalem Arabs knew full well what was going
on, as evidenced by one notable's complaint about the royal residences:
"those palaces should have been built in Jerusalem, but were
removed from here, so that Jerusalem would remain not a city,
but a kind of village." East Jerusalem's Municipal Counsel
twice formally complained of the Jordanian authorities' discrimination
against their city.

Perhaps most insulting of all was the decline in Jerusalem's
religious standing. Mosques lacked sufficient funds. Jordanian
radio broadcast the Friday prayers not from Al-Aqsa Mosque but
from an upstart mosque in Amman. (Ironically, Radio Israel began
broadcasting services from Al-Aqsa immediately after the Israel
victory in 1967.) This was part of a larger pattern, as the Jordanian
authorities sought to benefit from the prestige of controlling
Jerusalem even as they put the city down: Marshall Breger and
Thomas Idinopulos note that although King 'Abdullah "styled
himself a protector of the holy sites, he did little to promote
the religious importance of Jerusalem to Muslims."

Nor were Jordan's rulers alone in ignoring Jerusalem; the city
virtually disappeared from the Arab diplomatic map. Malcolm Kerr's
well-known study on inter-Arab relations during this period (The
Arab Cold War) appears not once to mention the city. No foreign
Arab leader came to Jerusalem during the nineteen years when Jordan
controlled East Jerusalem, and King Husayn (r. 1952-99) himself
only rarely visited. King Faysal of Saudi Arabia spoke often after
1967 of his yearning to pray in Jerusalem, yet he appears never
to have bothered to pray there when he had the chance. Perhaps
most remarkable is that the PLO's founding document, the Palestinian
National Covenant of 1964, does not once mention Jerusalem or
even allude to it.

VI. Israeli Rule

This neglect came to an abrupt end after June 1967, when the
Old City came under Israeli control. Palestinians again made Jerusalem
the centerpiece of their political program. The Dome of the Rock
turned up in pictures everywhere, from Yasir Arafat's office to
the corner grocery. Slogans about Jerusalem proliferated and the
city quickly became the single most emotional issue of the Arab-Israeli
conflict. The PLO made up for its 1964 oversight by specifically
mentioning Jerusalem in its 1968 constitution as "the seat
of the Palestine Liberation Organization."

"As during the era of the Crusaders," Lazarus-Yafeh
points out, Muslim leaders "began again to emphasize the
sanctity of Jerusalem in Islamic tradition." In the process,
they even relied on some of the same arguments (e.g., rejecting
the occupying power's religious connections to the city) and some
of the same hadiths to back up those allegations. Muslims began
echoing the Jewish devotion to Jerusalem: Arafat declared that
"Al-Quds is in the innermost of our feeling, the feeling
of our people and the feeling of all Arabs, Muslims, and Christians
in the world." Extravagant statements became the norm (Jerusalem
was now said to be "comparable in holiness" to Mecca
and Medina; or even "our most sacred place"). Jerusalem
turned up regularly in Arab League and United Nations resolutions.
The Jordanian and Saudi governments now gave as munificently to
the Jerusalem religious trust as they had been stingy before 1967.

Nor were Palestinians alone in this emphasis on Jerusalem:
the city again served as a powerful vehicle for mobilizing Muslim
opinion internationally. This became especially clear in September
1969, when King Faysal parlayed a fire at Al-Aqsa Mosque into
the impetus to convene twenty-five Muslim heads of state and establish
the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a United Nations-style
institution for Muslims. In Lebanon, the fundamentalist group
Hizbullah depicts the Dome of the Rock on everything from wall
posters to scarves and under the picture often repeats its slogan:
"We are advancing." Lebanon's leading Shi'i authority,
Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, regularly exploits the theme of liberating
Jerusalem from Israeli control to inspire his own people; he does
so, explains his biographer Martin Kramer, not for pie-in-the-sky
reasons but "to mobilize a movement to liberate Lebanon for
Islam."

Similarly, the Islamic Republic of Iran has made Jerusalem
a central issue, following the dictate of its founder, Ayatollah
Khomeini, who remarked that "Jerusalem is the property of
Muslims and must return to them." Since shortly after the
regime's founding, its 1-rial coin and 1000-rial banknote have
featured the Dome of the Rock (though, embarrassingly, the latter
initially was mislabeled "Al-Aqsa Mosque"). Iranian
soldiers at war with Saddam Husayn's forces in the 1980s received
simple maps showing their sweep through Iraq and onto Jerusalem.
Ayatollah Khomeini decreed the last Friday of Ramadan as Jerusalem
Day, and this commemoration has served as a major occasion for
anti-Israel harangues in many countries, including Turkey, Tunisia,
and Morocco. The Islamic Republic of Iran celebrates the holiday
with stamps and posters featuring scenes of Jerusalem accompanied
by exhortative slogans. In February 1997, a crowd of some 300,000
celebrated Jerusalem Day in the presence of dignitaries such as
President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Jerusalem Day is celebrated (complete
with a roster of speeches, an art exhibit, a folkloric show, and
a youth program) as far off as Dearborn, Michigan.

As it has become common for Muslims to claim passionate attachment
to Jerusalem, Muslim pilgrimages to the city have multiplied four-fold
in recent years. A new "virtues of Jerusalem" literature
has developed. So emotional has Jerusalem become to Muslims that
they write books of poetry about it (especially in Western languages).
And in the political realm, Jerusalem has become a uniquely unifying
issue for Arabic-speakers. "Jerusalem is the only issue that
seems to unite the Arabs. It is the rallying cry," a senior
Arab diplomat noted in late 2000.

The fervor for Jerusalem at times challenges even the centrality
of Mecca. No less a personage than Crown Prince 'Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia has been said repeatedly to say that for him, "Jerusalem
is just like the holy city of Mecca." Hasan Nasrallah, the
leader of Hizbullah goes further yet, declaring in a major speech:
"We won't give up on Palestine, all of Palestine, and Jerusalem
will remain the place to which all jihad warriors will direct
their prayers."

Dubious Claims

Along with these high emotions, three historically dubious
claims promoting the Islamic claim to Jerusalem have emerged.

The Islamic connection to Jerusalem is older than the Jewish.
The Palestinian "minister" of religious endowments
asserts that Jerusalem has "always" been under Muslim
sovereignty. Likewise, Ghada Talhami, a polemicist, asserts that
"There are other holy cities in Islam, but Jerusalem holds
a special place in the hearts and minds of Muslims because its
fate has always been intertwined with theirs." Always? Jerusalem's
founding antedated Islam by about two millennia, so how can that
be? Ibrahim Hooper of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic
Relations explains this anachronism: "the Muslim attachment
to Jerusalem does not begin with the prophet Muhammad, it begins
with the prophets Abraham, David, Solomon and Jesus, who are also
prophets in Islam." In other words, the central figures of
Judaism and Christianity were really proto-Muslims. This accounts
for the Palestinian man-in-the-street declaring that "Jerusalem
was Arab from the day of creation."

The Qur'an mentions Jerusalem. So complete is the identification
of the Night Journey with Jerusalem that it is found in many publications
of the Qur'an, and especially in translations. Some state in a
footnote that the "furthest mosque" "must"
refer to Jerusalem. Others take the (blasphemous?) step of inserting
Jerusalem right into the text after "furthest mosque."
This is done in a variety of ways. The Sale translation uses italics:

from the sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple
of Jerusalem

the Asad translation relies on square brackets:

from the Inviolable House of Worship [at Mecca] to the Remote
House of Worship [at Jerusalem]

and the Behbudi-Turner version places it right in the text
without any distinction at all:

from the Holy Mosque in Mecca to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Palestine.

If the Qur'an in translation now has Jerusalem in its text,
it cannot be surprising to find that those who rely on those translations
believe that Jerusalem "is mentioned in the Qur'an";
and this is precisely what a consortium of American Muslim institutions
claimed in 2000. One of their number went yet further; according
to Hooper , "the Koran refers to Jerusalem by its Islamic
centerpiece, al-Aqsa Mosque." This error has practical consequences:
for example, Ahmad 'Abd ar-Rahman, secretary-general of the PA
"cabinet," rested his claim to Palestinian sovereignty
on this basis: "Jerusalem is above tampering, it is inviolable,
and nobody can tamper with it since it is a Qur'anic text."

Muhammad actually visited Jerusalem. The Islamic biography
of the Prophet Muhammad's life is very complete and it very clearly
does not mention his leaving the Arabian Peninsula, much less
voyaging to Jerusalem. Therefore, when Karen Armstrong, a specialist
on Islam, writes that "Muslim texts make it clear that the
story of Muhammad's mystical Night Journey to Jerusalem was not
a physical experience but a visionary one," she is merely
stating the obvious. Indeed, this phrase is contained in an article
titled, "Islam's Stake: Why Jerusalem Was Central to Muhammad"
which posits that "Jerusalem was central to the spiritual
identity of Muslims from the very beginning of their faith."
Not good enough. Armstrong found herself under attack for a "shameless
misrepresentation" of Islam and claiming that "Muslims
themselves do not believe the miracle of their own prophet."

Jerusalem has no importance to Jews. The first step is to deny
a Jewish connection to the Western (or Wailing) Wall, the only
portion of the ancient Temple that still stands. In 1967, a top
Islamic official of the Temple Mount portrayed Jewish attachment
to the wall as an act of "aggression against al-Aqsa mosque."
The late King Faysal of Saudi Arabia spoke on this subject with
undisguised scorn: "The Wailing Wall is a structure they
weep against, and they have no historic right to it. Another wall
can be built for them to weep against." 'Abd al-Malik Dahamsha,
a Muslim member of Israel's parliament, has flatly stated that
"the Western Wall is not associated with the remains of the
Jewish Temple." The Palestinian Authority's website states
about the Western Wall that "Some Orthodox religious Jews
consider it as a holy place for them, and claim that the wall
is part of their temple which all historic studies and archeological
excavations have failed to find any proof for such a claim."
The PA's mufti describes the Western Wall as "just a fence
belonging to the Muslim holy site" and declares that "There
is not a single stone in the Wailing-Wall relating to Jewish history."
He also makes light of the Jewish connection, dismissively telling
an Israeli interviewer, "I heard that your Temple was in
Nablus or perhaps Bethlehem." Likewise, Arafat announced
that Jews "consider Hebron to be holier than Jerusalem."
There has even been some scholarship, from 'Ayn Shams University
in Egypt, alleging to show that Al-Aqsa Mosque predates the Jewish
antiquities in Jerusalem ­ by no less than two thousand years.

In this spirit, Muslim institutions pressure the Western media
to call the Temple Mount and the Western Wall by their Islamic
names (Al-Haram ash-Sharif, Al-Buraq), and not their much older
Jewish names. (Al-Haram ash-Sharif, for example, dates only from
the Ottoman era.) When Western journalists do not comply, Arafat
responds with outrage, with his news agency portraying this as
part of a "constant conspiracy against our sanctities in
Palestine" and his mufti deeming this contrary to Islamic
law.

The second step is to deny Jews access to the wall. "It's
prohibited for Jews to pray at the Western Wall," asserts
an Islamist leader living in Israel. The director of the Al-Aqsa
Mosque asserts that "This is a place for Muslims, only Muslims.
There is no temple here, only Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the
Rock." The Voice of Palestine radio station demands that
Israeli politicians not be allowed even to touch the wall. 'Ikrima
Sabri, the Palestinian Authority's mufti, prohibits Jews from
making repairs to the wall and extends Islamic claims further:
"All the buildings surrounding the Al-Aqsa mosque are an
Islamic waqf."

The third step is to reject any form of Jewish control in Jerusalem,
as Arafat did in mid-2000: "I will not agree to any Israeli
sovereign presence in Jerusalem." He was echoed by Saudi
Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, who stated that "There is
nothing to negotiate about and compromise on when it comes to
Jerusalem." Even Oman's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs
Yusuf bin 'Alawi bin 'Abdullah told the Israeli prime minister
that sovereignty in Jerusalem should be exclusively Palestinian
"to ensure security and stability."

The final step is to deny Jews access to Jerusalem at all.
Toward this end, a body of literature blossoms that insists on
an exclusive Islamic claim to all of Jerusalem. School textbooks
allude to the city's role in Christianity and Islam, but ignore
Judaism. An American affiliate of Hamas claims Jerusalem as "an
Arab, Palestinian and Islamic holy city." A banner carried
in a street protest puts it succinctly: "Jerusalem is Arab."
No place for Jews here.

Anti-Jerusalem Views

This Muslim love of Zion notwithstanding, Islam contains a
recessive but persistent strain of anti-Jerusalem sentiment, premised
on the idea that emphasizing Jerusalem is non-Islamic and can
undermine the special sanctity of Mecca.

In the early period of Islam, the Princeton historian Bernard
Lewis notes, "there was strong resistance among many theologians
and jurists" to the notion of Jerusalem as a holy city. They
viewed this as a "Judaizing error-as one more among many
attempts by Jewish converts to infiltrate Jewish ideas into Islam."
Anti-Jerusalem stalwarts circulated stories to show that the idea
of Jerusalem's holiness is a Jewish practice. In the most important
of them, a converted Jew named , Ka'b al-Ahbar, suggested to Caliph
'Umar that Al-Aqsa Mosque be built by the Dome of the Rock. The
caliph responded by accusing him of reversion to his Jewish roots:

'Umar asked him: "Where do you think we should put the
place of prayer?"

"By the [Temple Mount] rock," answered Ka'b.

By God, Ka'b," said 'Umar, "you are following after
Judaism. I saw you take off your sandals [following Jewish practice]."

"I wanted to feel the touch of it with my bare feet,"
said Ka'b.

"I saw you," said 'Umar. "But no Go along!
We were not commanded concerning the Rock, but we were commanded
concerning the Ka'ba [in Mecca]."

Another version of this anecdote makes the Jewish content even
more explicit: "in this one, Ka'b al-Ahbar tries to induce
Caliph 'Umar to pray north of the Holy Rock, pointing out the
advantage of this: "Then the entire Al-Quds, that is, Al-Masjid
al-Haram will be before you." In other words, the convert
from Judaism is saying, the Rock and Mecca will be in a straight
line and Muslims can pray toward both of them at the same time.

That Muslims for almost a year and a half during Muhammad's
lifetime directed prayers toward Jerusalem has had a permanently
contradictory effect on that city's standing in Islam. The incident
partially imbued Jerusalem with prestige and sanctity, but it
also made the city a place uniquely rejected by God. Some early
hadiths have Muslims expressing this rejection by purposefully
praying with their back sides to Jerusalem, a custom that still
survives in vestigial form; he who prays in Al-Aqsa Mosque not
coincidentally turns his back precisely to the Temple area toward
which Jews pray. Or, in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's sharp formulation:
when a Muslim prays in Al-Aqsa, "his back is to it. Also
some of his lower parts."

Ibn Taymiya (1263-1328), one of Islam's strictest and most
influential religious thinkers, is perhaps the outstanding spokesman
of the anti-Jerusalem view. In his wide-ranging attempt to purify
Islam of accretions and impieties, he dismissed the sacredness
of Jerusalem as a notion deriving from Jews and Christians, and
also from the long-ago Umayyad rivalry with Mecca. Ibn Taymiya's
student, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya (1292-1350), went further and rejected
hadiths about Jerusalem as false. More broadly, learned Muslims
living after the Crusades knew that the great publicity given
to hadiths extolling Jerusalem's sanctity resulted from the Countercrusade-from
political exigency, that is-and therefore treated them warily.

There are other signs too of Jerusalem's relatively low standing
in the ladder of sanctity: a historian of art finds that, "in
contrast to representations of Mecca, Medina, and the Ka'ba, depictions
of Jerusalem are scanty." The belief that the Last Judgment
would take place in Jerusalem was said by some medieval authors
to be a forgery to induce Muslims to visit the city.

Modern writers sometimes take exception to the envelope of
piety that has surrounded Jerusalem. Muhammad Abu Zayd wrote a
book in Egypt in 1930 that was so radical that it was withdrawn
from circulation and is no longer even extant. In it, among many
other points, he

dismissed the notion of the Prophet's heavenly journey via
Jerusalem, claiming that the Qur'anic rendition actually refers
to his Hijra from Mecca to Madina; "the more remote mosque"
(al-masjid al-aqsa) thus had nothing to do with Jerusalem, but
was in fact the mosque in Madina.

That this viewpoint is banned shows the nearly complete victory
in Islam of the pro-Jerusalem viewpoint. Still, an occasional
expression still filters through. At a summit meeting of Arab
leaders in March 2001, Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi made fun of his colleagues'
obsession with Al-Aqsa Mosque. "The hell with it," delegates
quoted him saying, "you solve it or you don't, it's just
a mosque and I can pray anywhere."

Conclusion

Politics, not religious sensibility, has fueled the Muslim
attachment to Jerusalem for nearly fourteen centuries; what the
historian Bernard Wasserstein has written about the growth of
Muslim feeling in the course of the Countercrusade applies through
the centuries: "often in the history of Jerusalem, heightened
religious fervour may be explained in large part by political
necessity." This pattern has three main implications. First,
Jerusalem will never be more than a secondary city for Muslims;
"belief in the sanctity of Jerusalem," Sivan rightly
concludes, "cannot be said to have been widely diffused nor
deeply rooted in Islam." Second, the Muslim interest lies
not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying control
over the city to anyone else. Third, the Islamic connection to
the city is weaker than the Jewish one because it arises as much
from transitory and mundane considerations as from the immutable
claims of faith.

Mecca, by contrast, is the eternal city of Islam, the place
from which non-Muslims are strictly forbidden. Very roughly speaking,
what Jerusalem is to Jews, Mecca is to Muslims ­ a point made
in the Qur'an itself (2:145) in recognizing that Muslims have
one qibla and "the people of the Book" another one.
The parallel was noted by medieval Muslims; the geographer Yaqut
(1179-1229) wrote, for example, that "Mecca is holy to Muslims
and Jerusalem to the Jews." In modern times, some scholars
have come to the same conclusion: "Jerusalem plays for the
Jewish people the same role that Mecca has for Muslims,"
writes Abdul Hadi Palazzi, director of the Cultural Institute
of the Italian Islamic Community.

The similarities are striking. Jews pray thrice to Jerusalem,
Muslims five times daily to Mecca. Muslims see Mecca as the navel
of the world, just as Jews see Jerusalem. Whereas Jews believe
Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac in Jerusalem, Muslims believe
it was Isaac's brother Ishmael, not Isaac, and that this episode
took place in Mecca. The Ka'ba in Mecca has similar functions
for Muslims as the Temple in Jerusalem for Jews (such as serving
as a destination for pilgrimage). The Temple and Ka'ba are both
said to be inimitable structures. The supplicant takes off his
shoes and goes barefoot in both their precincts. Solomon's Temple
was inaugurated on Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the year, and
the Ka'ba receives its new cover also on the tenth day of each
year. If Jerusalem is for Jews a place so holy that not just its
soil but even its air is deemed sacred, Mecca is the place whose
"very mention reverberates awe in Muslims' hearts,"
according to Abad Ahmad of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey.

This parallelism of Mecca and Jerusalem offers the basis of
a solution, as Sheikh Palazzi wisely writes:

separation in directions of prayer is a mean to decrease possible
rivalries in management of Holy Places. For those who receive
from Allah the gift of equilibrium and the attitude to reconciliation,
it should not be difficult to conclude that, as no one is willing
to deny Muslims a complete sovereignty over Mecca, from an Islamic
point of view -notwithstanding opposite, groundless propagandistic
claims - there is not any sound theological reason to deny an
equal right of Jews over Jerusalem.

To back up this view, Palazzi notes several striking and oft-neglected
passages in the Qur'an . One of them (5:22-23) quotes Moses instructing
the Jews to "enter the Holy Land (al-ard al-muqaddisa) which
God has assigned unto you." Another verse (17:104) has God
Himself making the same point: "We said to the Children of
Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Land.'" Qur'an 2:145 states
that the Jews "would not follow your qibla; nor are you going
to follow their qibla," indicating a recognition of the Temple
Mount as the Jews' direction of prayer. "God himself is saying
that Jerusalem is as important to Jews as Mecca is to Moslems,"
Palazzi concludes.

His analysis has a clear and sensible implication: just as
Muslims rule an undivided Mecca, Jews should rule an undivided
Jerusalem.

Jerusalem in Eschatology. Eschatology is a complex subject,
beset with many difficulties of interpretation that are best considered
elsewhere. Here the concern is simply to note certain truths in
the main outline, without attempting to fit them into a system
or to use them to preview history,

A. Location of the Throne of God's Great King. From the time
that it was taken by David for his throne, Jerusalem has been
both a reality and an ideal. As a reality, it can be sinful, apostate,
abominable, subject to God's wrath, besieged by enemies, and finally
destroyed. "I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour
the strongholds of Jerusalem," says the Lord (Am. 2:5). "Zion
shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
and the mountain of the house a wooded height" (Mic. 4:1;
cf. Isa. 2:2). "And when your people say, 'Why has the Lord
our God done all these things to us?' you shall say to them, 'As
you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so
you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours"' (Jer.
5:19). "They will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led
captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down
by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled"
(Lk. 21:24).

Nevertheless, Jerusalem remains the hope of the world. "I
have set my king on Zion, my holy hill," says the Lord (Ps.
2:6). "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the
city of our God! His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is
the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city
of the great King" (48: If.). "Come, let us go up to
the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that
he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. For
out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem" (Isa. 2:3; cf. Mic. 4:1-3). Jerusalem is to be
the seat of government of the wonderful counselor, the prince
of peace, of whom alone it could be said, "Of the increase
of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the
throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to
uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth
and forevermore" (Isa. 9:7). "Rejoice greatly, O daughter
of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes
to you; triumphant and victorious is he" (Zec. 9:9).

No matter how evil the king, no matter how sinful the people,
the word of the Lord to His prophets was never a word of despair,
never a message that He had given up His original plan. Through
His chosen people He will work out His redemptive plan. Through
His chosen king He will rule the nations in righteousness and
peace.

B. Center of a Cosmic Struggle. Jerusalem is not simply the
capital of a kingdom that must fight against other kingdom* of
the world for survival. It is the city of God, and there is a
cosmic, satanic opposition against God and against His redemptive
purpose. A clear doctrine about the satanic is rarely expressed
although greatly needed in the present age. Paul said it well:
"For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against
the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers
of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness
in the heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12). Ezekiel foretold the
days when the Lord will restore His people to their own land (Ezk.
36:28), when by His spirit He will make His dead people live again
(37:11), take them from the nations and bring them to the mountains
of Israel, and place one king, His servant David, over them (vv.
21f, 24).

But these restorations will not ultimately solve the problem,
for opposition to God's plan and His people remains. Ezekiel portrays
the opposition as Gog of the land of Magog (Ezk. 38: 1) who will
go against these regathered people on the mountains of Israel
(v. 8). Ezekiel makes clear that this will be no ordinary war,
for this time God will not call upon Egyptians or Assyrians or
Babylonians to do His work. He Himself will destroy Gog and his
satanic forces (vv. 21-23). "1 will set my glory among the
nations; and all the nations shall see my judgment which I have
executed, and my hand which I have laid on them," says the
Lord (39:21). The author of the book of Revelation uses the same
figure. After portraying war in heaven (Rev. 12:7) and the defeat
of the deceiver of the whole world (v. 9), the revelator sees
a struggle on earth (v. 13), but on Mt. Zion stands the Lamb with
myriads of His own (14: 1). Even after the song of triumph (19:
1- 10), however, there is still a satanic opponent to be destroyed.
Satan is loosed from prison and enlists by deception the forces
of Gog and Magog (20:7f .). "But fire came down from heaven
and consumed them" (v. 9), and the devil and Death and Hades
were thrown into the lake of fire (vv. 10, 14).

C. Perfect and Eternal Dwelling Place of God. In Ezekiel's
temple vision, which he carefully dated, 10 Nisan of the fourteenth
year after Jerusalem was captured (= Apr. 28, 575 B.C.), the prophet
saw the new temple (cf. Ezk. 40:1-4). Much of the imagery is difficult
to understand, but the message is clear: "The name of the
city henceforth shall be, The Lord is there" (48:35).

The book of Revelation closes with a vision of the new Jerusalem,
set in the new heaven and the new earth, "coming down out
of heaven from God" (Rev. 21:2). The writer heard a great
voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling of God
is with men" (v. 3). Death, sorrow, and pain are no more,
as the prophets of old foretold, "for the former things have
passed away" (v. 4), The holy city hanging down from heaven
like a splendid satellite has the glory of God, which is radiant
like a rare jasper, clear as crystal (vv. 10f.). It has walls
and gates; the gates bear the names of the twelve tribes of Israel
and the foundations bear the names of the twelve apostles, for
there is no longer any division of the people of God (vv. 22,
24). The gates shall never be shut (21:25; 22:5), either to keep
out the enemy - for the last enemy has been destroyed and nothing
unclean shall enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or
falsehood (21:23-27) - or to keep in the citizens, for the Ruler
is not of this world. John saw no temple in the new Jerusalem,
"for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb"
(21:22). The temple made with hands was only a symbol of God's
presence and could not, as Solomon recognized from the beginning
, contain the eternal God (1 Kings 8:27). What need is there for
a symbol when God Himself dwells in the city? There is no need
of the light of the sun or the moon, for the glory of the One
who created the luminaries is the light and in that light shall
the nations walk. The river of the water of life flows from the
throne of God, and the tree of life grows on its banks, "and
the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (International
Standard Bible Encyclopedia, "Jerusalem" 1982 Wm B.
Eerdmans, Grand Rapids).

Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law."

Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years.
The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes. Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading
international lawyers - the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions.

Gauthier's main point, as summarized by Israpundit editor Ted Belman, is that a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution,
the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem.
The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I - Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan - agreed to create a Jewish national
home in what is now the Land of Israel.

San Remo

The relevant resolution reads as follows: "The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust...the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined
by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory [authority that] will be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration...in favour of the establishment
in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

Gauthier notes that the San Remo treaty specifically notes that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine" - but says nothing about any "political" rights of the Arabs living there.

The San Remo Resolution also bases itself on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which declares that it is a "a sacred trust of civilization"
to provide for the well-being and development of colonies and territories whose inhabitants are "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions
of the modern world." Specifically, a resolution was formulated to create a Mandate to form a Jewish national home in Palestine.

League of Nations

The League of Nations' resolution creating the Palestine Mandate, included the following significant clause: "Whereas recognition has thereby been given to
the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." No such recognition of
Arab rights in Palestine was granted.

In 1945, the United Nations took over from the failed League of Nations - and assumed the latter's obligations. Article 80 of the UN Charter states: "Nothing
in this Chapter shall be construed, in or of itself, to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international
instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."

UN Partition Plan

However, in 1947, the General Assembly of the UN passed Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan. It violated the League of Nations' Mandate for
Palestine in that it granted political rights to the Arabs in western Palestine - yet, ironically, the Arabs worked to thwart the plan's passage, while the Jews applauded it.

Resolution 181 also provided for a Special regime for Jerusalem, with borders delineated in all four directions: The then-extant municipality of Jerusalem
plus the surrounding villages and towns up to Abu Dis in the east, Bethlehem in the south, Ein Karem and Motza in the west, and Shuafat in the north.

Referendum Scheduled for Jerusalem

The UN resolved that the City of Jerusalem shall be established as a separate entity under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations.
The regime was to come into effect by October 1948, and was to remain in force for a period of ten years, unless the UN's Trusteeship Council decided otherwise.
After the ten years, the residents of Jerusalem "shall be then free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City."

The resolution never took effect, because Jordan controlled eastern Jerusalem after the 1948 War of Independence and did not follow its provisions.

After 1967

After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel regained Jerusalem and other land west of Jordan. Gauthier notes that the UN Security Council
then passed Resolution 242 authorizing Israel to remain in possession of all the land until it had "secure and recognized boundaries.' The resolution was notably
silent on Jerusalem, and also referred to the "necessity for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem," with no distinction made between Jewish and Arab refugees.

Today

Given Jerusalem's strong Jewish majority, Gauthier concludes, Israel should be demanding that the long-delayed city referendum on the city's future be held
as soon as possible. Not only should Israel be demanding that the referendum be held now, Jerusalem should be the first order of business.
"Olmert is sloughing us off by saying [as he did before the Annapolis Conference two months ago], 'Jerusalem is not on the table yet,'" Gauthier concludes.
"He should demand that the referendum take place before the balance of the land is negotiated. If the Arabs wonÕt agree to the referendum, there is nothing to talk about."